This is amazing!! They are basically doing like we are doing with the bins, but with beautiful wooden planters and pond liner type materials, and using the walls to support… check it out, especially their research report
Thanks all for a wonderful time at the Eagle Street Rooftop Farms, so rad to talk with Window Farms, BrightFarms and Annie of the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm… all incredible alt farming heros!
If you are looking for more information about the bucket SIP & bin SIP planters, I promise to draw up our zines for those super soon! I’ll also print a few more of the soda bottle zines, if you didnt get one you can email me - I’ll figure out a few drop points to leave them in the city, keep ya posted.
In the meantime, hope everyone stays hydrated~ Tomatoes are coming soon…
Someone has been eating the sunflower seeds in the BFP roof garden. Given that it is on a roof in industrial Brooklyn I assumed it was pigeons or the ubiquitous brown finches. Today I was surprised when I interrupted a little red bird snacking in the garden. I’m pretty sure it is a Purple Finch.
Staring this garden has been the catalyst for a continuing series of surprises.
Stalking a bumblebee pollinating a hot pepper in the BFP roof garden.
Thanks bee.
The Bottle herb garden skill share at the Silent Barn last weekend was a lot of fun. We left behind some additions to their nice little garden and some happy helpers took home there own bottle sip planters.
We hope to check in later with the Barn’s roof garden and help develop it further. Maybe set up a few hanging tomatoes?
Thanks to Joe and all the Barn residents.
So today while I was watering the garden I accidentally broke a chard leaf. I stuck it in my back pocket, forgot it and sat on it while computering for the last 3 hrs.
Maybe scanning it does it some justice? I will have a nice snack later at any rate.
Come hang out with us at the Silent Barn Saturday, June 5th for an urban gardening skill share.
We will be making a mini herb garden out of recycled and found materials for the Silent Barn roof garden. Everyone is invited to help out and learn this super easy way to grow awesome fresh herbs almost anywhere.
Bring an empty 2 or 3 liter bottle and take home a little something for your own window or fire escape.
If you feel like sharing we will also be using the following; potting soil, old pantyhose/stockings, herb seeds, contact paper/adhesive vinyl, milk crates and utility knives.
When: 2 - 4pm.
Where: The Silent Barn roof
email us with any questions.
Before the economic crap-fest of 2008, back when new condos were the scourge of north brooklyn, our friends at the Dead Herring lost there lovely little backyard because their landlords dug a giant hole for the foundation of a new building. Once the world realized their digital money was not real they freaked out and stopped building. Today the beginnings of the foundation remain, an open earth wound filling with weird trash and destabilizing the adjacent buildings.
We brought or friends at the Herring a bunch of seed bombs, a tried and true tool of guerrilla gardeners. With rain and al little luck each bomb will grow an island of northeastern wildflowers hopefully turning the pit from an eyesore into beautiful pollinator habitat.
We’ve been Thinking a lot about the meaning of the Future Gardens Project, in a larger context. Why are we gardening, (now with no land and on such an alien place like a roof) and especially gardening for food? We can’t grow all our food, and we clearly aren’t homesteaders living in the city. We are learning a lot and there is something wonderful about watching your food become itself, sitting with a plant, time, patience and gaining better sense of connection to the environment? the food chain? what if we werent here?
The last time something so green gardeny was in the national zeitgeist was perhaps the wartime victory gardens movements
“gardens for victory” = victory gardens
“gardens for the future = future gardens
and as Maggie summarized from wikipedia’s victory gardens entry:
these gardens were also meant as a moral booster, to give the general public a source of empowerment and a sense that they had control over their future. I think this correlates with gardening today amidst the often overwhelming news of ecological ruin perpetuated by seemingly unstoppable corporations.
Future Gardens Project is a movement, a feeling, it is you and the seeds you will sow, your windowsill roof or fire escape, a seed bombed tree pit, your ex-lawn and all the transplants you just biked home from the farmers market.
Next up, Victory Future Chickens?
-L
The Future Gardens Project is a collaborative work-in-progress between Laura Cline & Maggie Pounds. We are embarking on an experiment in urban situational agriculture and the peripherally occurring social residue.
