Rooftop Farming is "Growing" in Popularity

Lucia Stone forwarded me a link to a video on a roof top farm in new York. What an amazing project!

We get asked a lot about doing vegetables on a roof top here in San Diego and indeed southern California in general. I am a firm believer that this is an outstanding use of a roof top garden - so much more to offer when you can harvest edibles from an otherwise wasted space. And the benefits of a green roof: storm water retention, energy reduction, extending the life of the membrane and bio-diversity, are all still applicable.

The challenge is two-fold. First our roofs in southern California are not built to handle the additional load of a green roof. So a retro-fit is difficult if not impossible.

The second issue is safety. A vegetable garden is labor intensive with all of the weeding, watering and harvesting. So the roof must have some type of railing surrounding it to prevent someone from falling off. In addition, code compliant access can pose a problem, unless designed in from the beginning.

This is one of the reasons we have been designing and installing living walls that support vegetables, herbs, spices and lettuces. Using a wall for vertical farming is nothing new and the benefit is that the engineering is minimized compared to a roof top. Plus, you don't have to worry about access issues unless you build a green wall high enough that one would need to stand on a ladder.

Design one in from the beginning? You bet! That will work just fine and not cost an arm and a leg in beefing up the structure. That said....anyone planning on a building a new building any time soon? ;)