The Rooftop Gardening Source

Urban agriculturalists Keith Agoada (Sky Vegetables and Rooftop Gardening Source), Dr. Mike Nichols, Anthony Foo, Ms. Morag Gamble, and Geoff Wilson will be presenting at the this half day conference. Find out more at the Green Roofs Australia Website

The Rooftop Gardening Source will provide you with more information about the speakers and the urban agriculture conference in the coming days.

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Are you a rooftop farming guru interested in spreading the love of growing veggies on the roof? Well now is your chance! We don’t care what your technique is, we just want to hear from you.

Email Keith@skyvegetables.com

From: Japan for Sustainability

A rooftop sweet-potato hydroponics system provided by NTT Facilities Inc., won an Eco-Products Award in the Eco-Services category on November 26, 2007 from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The system grows sweet potatoes without soil by circulating water, mixed with soluble fertilizer containing minerals and other nutrients, through the growing unit.

Compared to conventional rooftop greening systems, this system has advantages in that it is light, does not need nursery soil to be carried up to rooftops, and can automatically control supplies of water and fertilizer. When sweet potato plants give off water vapor from their leaves, they absorb large amounts of heat, lowering the surrounding temperature. According to research by NTT Facilities comparing an area covered with sweet potatoes and a non-vegetated area, the daily temperature varies by only 3 degrees Celsius in the vegetated area, compared to 27 degrees in the non-vegetated area.

This system makes good use of the sweet-potato’s strengths, such as fast growth, high insulation capability, and ease of cultivation. Sweet potatoes are generally supposed to be ready to harvest five months after installing the cultivation units. Since the system doesn’t use soil, it is easily installed on existing buildings. It also provides the enjoyable experience of harvesting the potatoes, as well as an opportunity to learn about related environmental problems.

http://www.japanfs.org/db/1606-e

Israeli architect firm Knafo Klimor won first prize at the 2nd International Architecture Competition for Sustainable Housing. The building features a high tech rooftop vegetable garden. http://www.knafoklimor.co.il/living-steel/10.html

From TreeHuggers

This evidently won “Best of Show” in the Cascadia Region Green Building Council’s Living Building Challenge. It is a “Center for Urban Agriculture,” a building, located on a .72-acre site, that includes fields for growing vegetables and grains, greenhouses, rooftop gardens and even a chicken farm.” According to CEO Washington, The building also would run completely independent of city water, providing its own drinking water partly by collecting rain via the structure’s 31,000-square-foot rooftop rainwater collection area. The water would be treated and recycled on site. And photovoltaic cells would produce nearly 100 percent of the building’s electricity.

“Constantly developing creative and challenging ideas is the best way to uncover innovative solutions to today’s problems,” states CEO Bert Gregory of Mithun in a news release touting the concept. ” And not to worry, potential urban-farm dwellers. Mithun would make room for humans, as well as chickens. The site would provide 318 small studio, one- and two-bedroom affordable apartments (no word on the mitigation of farm smells wafting into your room). The entry level would feature a cafe serving organic foods grown on site. Produce grown at the site would be distributed to local grocers, saving even more energy by reducing transportation miles.”

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/mithun_architec.php

By Hazim Younis

Recently, Egypt has embarked on a project to increase the amount of greenery on rooftops. This provided a good opportunity for housewives and youth to use their time fruitfully and increase oxygen production in a choking environment.

Due to the rapid expansion of the Egyptian population, and building on cultivated land, there are limited resources for many families living in the major cities. This situation has a negative impact on the general well-being of the families living in poor urban or suburban neighborhoods. Similar conditions can be found in much of the developing world. A solution to a small part of this problem could be providing these families with an easy source of income and healthy nutrition.

This easy-to-do project can be carried out by anyone. All the materials and professional advice needed are found at the Central Laboratory of Agricultural Climate (CLAC). Dr. Usama Al Baheiri, president of CLAC, states that vast areas are not required to carry out the project. However, it is important that all sorts of junk or garbage be removed from the rooftop so that no sunlight is blocked from the plants. The area to be used should have sunlight for at least four to five hours daily to allow enough exposure for the fruits and vegetables to flourish.

http://www.islamonline.net/English/Science/2004/09/article03.shtml

DAKAR, Senegal — Can roof-top vegetable gardens contribute in any substantial way to the food needs of big cities? In an experiment within FAO’s Special Program for Food Security, hydroponic micro-gardens are being cultivated here to find out.

Aminata Diop, 30, bustles around elevated trays of tomatoes, lettuce, beans and pumpkins growing on the roof of her parents’ house in a suburb of Dakar. The plants grow not in soil but hydroponically — in nutrient-enriched water. The plants are supported by an aggregate of gravel and groundnut shells or grow through holes punched in sheets of styrofoam, which float on the water in the tray.

Ms Diop learned how to set up and tend her micro-garden at a five-day farmers’ training class held by FAO. A one-metre-square box on wooden legs, which costs about US$7 to build, can yield 40 to 50 kilos of tomatoes per year. The seedlings come from the project nursery.

http://www.fao.org/NEWS/2002/020102-e.htm

By Geoff Wilson

Singapore has a new business opportunity – food production from its residential and commercial rooftops. It is an opportunity likely to open up to every city in the world. Who better to embrace the opportunity as it spreads globally than the green roof companies already operating strongly in 16 countries? A survey of the food-from-the-roof opportunity in Singapore, a thriving Asian city-state with miniscule farmland resources, has shown it may be able to devote up to 1,000 hectares of its urban rooftops to fresh vegetable production now mostly imported (at a considerable fossil fuel energy cost). When that happens it will influence myriad cities elsewhere.

Gregory Chow calculated that about 39,000 tonnes of vegetables a year could be produced from the 212 hectares he and his students studied. If these vegetables were sold for around $2/kg – the value of produce would be around S$40 million a year - approximately U.S. $ 23.5 million a year.Given that the Singapore Government’s objective is to displace around 20% of the annual consumption of 380,000 tonnes of fresh vegetables consumed each year with local production (currently at only 5% pa of the total), this Ngee Ann Polytechnic study is significant justification for more serious analysis of rooftop production of fresh vegetables across the whole of Singapore.

http://www.greenroofs.com/archives/gf_nov-dec05.htm

By: Marty Logan & Mark Foss In Montreal, as in other Canadian cities, many citizens would like to rent a small plot of land or join other growers to plant and grow vegetable crops cooperatively and then share the harvest. Long waiting lists for community gardens, however, thwart these modest ambitions. In light of high demand and limited space for urban gardens, Alternatives is experimenting with a gardening system called “rooftop simplified hydroponics” - a system adapted from the group’s experiences in the developing world.

http://www.alternatives.ca/article1165.html

In Oakland, CA, the “Bay Localize” group, a nonprofit organization, conducted rooftop farming tests. The goal of the study was to determine if the local rooftops could be used productively. One aspect of this project tested vegetable farming on 18 roofs. 10 of the facilities used a hydroponics system and the other eight used a soil based system. According to the results of the study, 273,373 pounds of vegetables could be produced in a year from these 18 roofs. This amount is sufficient to satisfy the recommended consumption for approximately 8,500 residents, which is more than the population of the study area itself.

http://www.baylocalize.org/projects/rooftop