“New” Illustrated Feature – Rooftop Farming in NYC

Farms aren’t synonymous with New York City, by any stretch of the common imagination, but that may be changing. I grew up in Eastern Queens, a ten minute drive to Nassau County and only a five minute drive to Lake Success. This means I had easy access to the Queens County Farm Museum, “New York City’s largest remaining tract of undisturbed farmland” and “the only working historical farm in the City”. I’ve been there countless times, in fact – for the fall festival, the apple picking festival, the Halloween festival, and countless spring and summer events. When I was a younger child I could spend hours and hours running from one rickety wooden fencing to another, dirtying my hands in the dirt and hay, talking to the animals as if they knew me and getting my face painted. When I became a little older, some of my friends and I attended these events socially, walking around for a while and enjoying the sights, sounds and sunlight before leaving to go elsewhere. In all honesty, it’s been a few years since I went to a Queens County Farm Museum event, something that I might rectify next week at their Halloween festival.

That’s not to say that I’ve lost touch with the greener side of New York City. Farmers markets are present in Brooklyn, where I now live, and frequent trips to Union Square give me the opportunity to purchase my fruits and vegetables from the men and women who cultivated them. In an effort to reconnect with my organic past, this past weekend I gathered some friends and attended the Jamaica Harvest Festival in Jamaica, Queens.

A few blocks of the normally busy street were blocked off for this annual street fair, now in its 8^th year, but due to rain, wind, and all-around inclement weather, the festivities were moved indoors. While the performers needed some time to get used to the new set-up, the largest demographic of attendees seemed perfectly content inside: the children. There were more than one hundred folks milling about throughout the day, most of them parents or couples with young children. The noise level in the enclosed space was a little much, but that was no fault of the event planners. Once you got used to it, you realized that you were really listening to young kids having a great time doing arts and crafts, learning about agriculture, listening to local musicians and decorating pumpkins.

Outside, under the protection of their own stands, vendors sold local and farm-fresh produce, jams, jellies, honey and other goodies for reasonable prices and with big smiles on their faces. The crowd was friendly – a local couple who have been coming to the Harvest Festival for years told me that it’s always a good way to meet new members of the community and appreciate the harvesting done by our local farmers. I got into a long discussion with that same couple about the increasing prevalence of farms in New York City – mostly urban, some vertical, some in year-round greenhouses. From these lifetime Queens residents, I learned of one type of farming I really didn’t know anything about at all: rooftop farming.

All the rage these days, it seems, rooftop farms are relatively easy to manage, spatially economical and, of course, good for the environment. Some such farms have even popped up around the South Bronx, an area not primarily known for it’s eco-friendly community. A 10,000 square foot rooftop farm is being installed by Habitat for Humanity on top of an apartment building in that area that will use heat generated from the residential part of the building and water collected on the roof to sustain itself. Fresh vegetables with be grown there and then sent to a local food co-op. The garden is planned to be able to produce enough vegetables annually for 450 people. Corporations like Delta AirLines lent a helping hand to this project in the form of $120,000 and eleven volunteers. Building the entire garden structure cost about $100,000 total, so I’m sure that check lifted a great deal of the financial burden off of Habitat for Humanity.

In the Lower East Side, one can find another garden like this, on a smaller scale: 400 square feet, built with about $3,000 dollars and the hard work of co-op residents and board members. Thinking about all of the pollution, air and otherwise, that’s around in New York City, one might be doubtful of the ability to farm here, but the head of this farm in the Lower East Side assured one reporter that they have little trouble growing and harvesting their crops. Their list of goods from this past season include golden zucchini, oakleaf lettuce, brussels sprouts, butternut squash, watermelon, rainbow chard, cucumbers, sunflowers, amaranth greens, tomatoes and herbs.

Not all roofs can sustain a rooftop farm. The structure itself must be strong enough  – soil, plants and water can add up to be very heavy, and reinforcements may be necessary.  If that’s entirely impossible, a farmer could simply place “planters” around the perimeter of the roof, usually the strongest area. Planters can be bought or made – plastic containers, cardboard boxes, egg cartons, plastic blow up children’s pools. These are similar methods used by window farmers (another farming sensation that’s been rapidly spreading throughout NYC, completely self-explanatory in its name). When the roof itself does become a farm, a waterproof membrane is laid out first, then insulation, and then a root barrier for the benefit of the plants.

Other such farms exist in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where peas, lettuce, cabbage, kale, peppers and earthworms are all in plain sight during harvest season. Annie Novak and Chris and Lisa Goode manage sixteen four-foot beds and have stepped up their game by irrigating the rooftop with rainwater and composting the soil with scraps from local eateries. An unused rooftop in Jamaica, Queens is being converted into a 12,000 square foot hydroponic farm, the first of its kind in NYC. By the spring of 2010, this $1.4 million dollar project will be providing an estimated 30 tons of fruits, vegetables and herbs per year to local restaurants,, markets, and chains like Whole Foods and Just Salads. The creators of this farm want their next project to bigger and better – a whopping 40,000 square feet – and this farm isn’t even finished being built yet!

Rooftop farming is a simple, straightforward and innovative concept, but a task to complete. Riverdale, the Upper West Side, Brooklyn Heights, Eagle Street, Staten Island – farms of this sort are arriving on the rooftops of many NYC neighborhoods, so keep your eyes peeled and towards the sky for more.