Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm is currently the largest commercial rooftop farm in America.
Although they have “Brooklyn” in their name, their flagship farm actually sits atop an old auto-parts factory in Queens and is roughly an acre in size. They recently added a second, larger location on top of an old Naval yard building.
A typical day for Brooklyn Grange co-founder, Ben Flanner, who rarely has time to look up to enjoy the view from harvesting the ongoing bounty of produce
Their goal is to share their knowledge and experience of a successful urban rooftop farming model so that can be replicated anywhere in the world. Equally important is to educate urban dwellers about where their food comes from. They grow over 20,000 pounds of produce a year in each of their one-acre locations.
In the kitchen, Chef Nathan prepares a delicious summer salad with pears and watercress.
For more information:
- Brooklyn Grange Farm website, the location featured in this episode
- Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn, NYC’s oldest rooftop farm
- More information on rooftop farms and urban living from Urban Gardens
- Chef Nathan’s recipe for Pear Salad with Watercress and Blue Cheese.
About GGWTV
Growing A Greener World is a national gardening series on Public Television that features organic gardening, green living and farm to table cooking. Each episode focuses on compelling and inspirational people making a difference through gardening. This gardening series covers everything from edible gardening and sustainable agriculture to seasonal cooking and preserving the harvest.
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I just saw a fantastic promo 1-2 min on Grow One Rooftop Farms (title?) I usually skip thru ads when watching news pieces on you tube, but this caught my eye. Produce was sold in lobby of bldg where it was grown. !!!! Can’t find that exact video again, but it got me searching and finding this wonderful rooftop gardening niche. More research showed me I am embarrassingly out of touch with the trend. I grew up in Pittsburgh with a small brick backyard, and got the organic gardening bug in college (1972-I am retired now) with the help of paperback version of Rodales’ Basic Book of Organic Gardening. I was in school at U of OK.
People told me you couldn’t grow cabbage in Oklahoma, but my crop was beautiful! I bet there are a lot of people that thought rooftop gardening was crazy! I have so many questions and wonder if a visit can be accommodated.
Kudos to your remarkable work.!