The Snow Storm

Posted on February 10, 2013 by

013The National Weather Service and New York Times have authoritatively harrumphed that the recent winter storm does not in fact have a name, “Nemo” having been chosen for ratings purposes by those for whom weather is mere entertainment.   As gardeners, we take the weather seriously, so BRTG will join the ranks of those who refer only to “the recent winter storm.”

Gardeners do not fear the snow, but the lack of it.  When we see the naked ground in the winter we think only of the freeze line descending  deeper and deeper, of root systems torn apart by the violent cataclysm of freezing and thawing soil, of our precious fluff and top soil fines being blown away by relentless winds from the north-east.    We are glad that our gardens are now snug below their customary winter blankets.

For urban gardeners in New York City, the mildness of this winter has produced some startling results.  A late crop of beets was pulled from the soil in early January,   

 001

and fresh spinach still emerges from the cold frame for a breakfast stir-fry.

010

And kale, one tough Brassica, keeps giving and giving to the roof-top gardener:

 015

shrugging off the snow with ease:

017

The sun gets stronger each day, and the gardener, like his plants, can feel the ultraviolet roots of the coming spring taking hold in the turbulent winter atmosphere.

003

Posted in Cold Frame, Cooking and Eating, Kale, Photos, Seen From the Battery Rooftop Garden, Weather | 5 Comments

Allotments

Posted on November 27, 2012 by

In the UK in the years before Margaret Thatcher whipped things into shape, there was not very much that the Battery Rooftop Gardener, then an American graduate student first discovering England, found worthy of emulation.   But I remember being deeply impressed by my first glimpse of an allotment garden.   

My hostess in suburban London, having been on a waiting list for several years, had just been allocated a plot in a fenced garden area located at one edge of the town commons, where, for only a few pounds sterling per annum, she had exclusive use of a generously sized plot to grow food.   The allotment, as it was called, was the vestige of an ancient practice whereby the sovereign, when making common land available for private development, set aside small plots for the use of the poor.  Allotment enthusiasts claim that allotments provided much of the produce for impoverished Englishmen during the 19th and early 20th centuries.  They peaked at about 1.4 million allotment plots during World War II, and now are made available by town councils to gardeners of all income levels.

Fast forward to the condominium building boom in New York and other American cities in the first decade of the 21st century.   The high-rise condominium buyer, in addition to exclusive use of his or her living space, is now offered, as separate units of real property, a storage room, a parking space, a bicycle storage slot and similar allocations of scarce space for things that are important to contemporary families.   Oddly, to my knowledge, these offerings have not yet included rooftop space for growing food.  They should. 

Contemporary city residences – driven in part by LEED points, but in larger part by what the marketing department tells the architects the buyers want – feature ample rooftop space, most of it communal, for sun-bathing, barbequing and the like.   What will be the first building, I wonder, to change this model and offer individual rooftop allotments?     

Developers need to rethink what contemporary urban dwellers will regard as the most-valued “amenities.”  I wager that access to fresh, home-grown food, and the chance for families to spend some quality time with their hands in the dirt, will soon rise to the top of the list.    It’s time for New Yorkers to put on their wellies and head up to the allotment. 

 

Posted in Design, Urban Agriculture and Food Policy | 3 Comments

Sandy

Posted on November 1, 2012 by

Your correspondent returned to lower Manhattan today, fearing that, like Icarus, he had dared to fly too high, to grow food where nature did not intend, and that he would find his presumption rewarded with a thorough smiting at the hands of Hurricane Sandy.  Before this part of the Battery was mandatorily evacuated on Sunday, things that might fly off the roof were secured, but the poor plants were left to fend for themselves: 

And fend they did.  Does this look like a chastened chard?

 

Or battered broccoli?

 

The fruit trees shed not a single limb:

 

The Stewartia, reputed to swoon at the slightest discomfort, showed no signs of 100 mph gusts:

 

The spinach slept snugly in its armored cold frame:

 

Even the Pyracantha refused to surrender a single berry to the gale:

 

 

 

And my resident Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottus, and he (or she) is truly polyglottus) was perched unperturbed in my Contorted Larch, patiently awaiting my return.   How he (or she) sheltered from the storm here on the 35th floor is truly a mystery:

 

Only the kale shed its leaves to save itself, looking remarkably like a palm tree following a hurricane:

 

But don’t be mislead by these tough plants.  Down below, the eastern side of lower Manhattan is quite devastated.  Our beloved Battery Park took a severe beating.  Virtually every large building in the southern and eastern parts of the financial district had its basement flooded,  damaging critical electric, heating and other systems.  I will look across tonight at the tip of Manhattan Island returned to pre-Columbian darkness, its hundreds of thousands of residents without power or water.  Further afield, in Staten Island and Queens, the loss of life reminds us that plants may be tough, but people are fragile, and the sea is strong.

 

Posted in Blueberries, Broccoli, Chard, Cold Frame, Fruit, Kale, Ornamental Trees, Photos, Weather | 13 Comments

Dead or Alive?

Posted on October 18, 2012 by

The sharp blade slices through the skin, flesh and vascular tissues with ease.    Pressure in the vascular system collapses.   Almost immediately senescence – a genetically regulated process which leads to the death of cells and organs – begins.  Individual cells react by discharging destructive enzymes:  Polyphenoloxidase, which starts a process of enzymic browning; Lipoxygenase, which promotes oxidation of the organic tissues; Lipase, which sets into motion the process of lipolytic rancidity; and Protease, which starts to soften the texture of the flesh and skin.    The metabolic properties of the organism are fundamentally disrupted:  Proteins, water-soluble vitamins, antioxidants and nucleic acids, instead of being generated as they are in living things, start to degrade.  At the same time, the rapidly dying appendage also starts to lose its ability to control its microbial population:  bacteria, mold and fungi begin to multiply, also consuming the nutrients that had been available to the cells.  Toxic and infectious bacteria start to reproduce unchecked.   

A macabre pre-Halloween account of a severed limb?  No.  I have just described what happens the moment a leaf of spinach is harvested from the host plant.  And 48 – 96 hours later (depending on the temperature), half of that spinach leaf’s folates, carotenoids, vitamins and other nutrients are lost.   So if your local farmer harvests the spinach on Thursday or Friday, sells it to you at the farm market on Saturday, and you eat it in your salad on Sunday, it is probably half as beneficial to you compared with the spinach leaf plucked from your roof shortly before tossing the salad on Sunday.    

Although not widely used, “half-life” is a concept that attempts to quantify the perishability of fruits and vegetables.   Although individual nutrients, like vitamins, enzymes and proteins, degrade at different speeds, the “half-life” measure looks at all the food components generally viewed as beneficial to humans, and estimates the length of time following harvest it takes for these nutrients to be reduced to 50% of the levels present in the plant when it was alive. 

 The notion of “half-life” ought to be a central part of the case for urban agriculture, and should inform our choices of what to grow at home.   My roof-top orchard, for example, contains both peaches and apples.   Looked at through the lens of “half-life,” my choice of peaches is a good one, because any peach that has travelled (or ripened off the tree) is a sorry shadow of  the same fruit that is tree-ripened and twisted from the limb moments before entering your mouth.  My choice of apples, on the other hand, is revealed to be an indulgence that is insupportable.  I gain little from the effort to coax a few apples into being on the 35th floor, and should be supporting Hudson Valley farmers, whose apples are undiminished when they reach the markets in Manhattan and, indeed, may well be superior to their urban counterparts due to the superb terroir for apples in up-state New York.

Of course there are many reasons other than peak nutrition to grow food in the city.  But for the rooftop farmer who wants to give priority to those plants where the benefits of immediate consumption are greatest, what are the best choices?  The internet is awash in contradictory information on the perishability of fruits and vegetables, much of it from studies sponsored by companies whose businesses involve the freezing, canning, transportation and/or marketing of food.   So please don’t afford the following the authority of independent peer-reviewed science, but take it for what it is, my own compilation and summary of those studies which seem to me to have the most credibility:

Shortest “half-life”:  lettuce, spinach, kale, endive, peaches, parsley, broccoli, asparagus, sweet corn, green beans.

Average “half-life”:  squash, eggplant, peppers, cauliflower, apricots.

Longest “half-life”:  apples, winter squash, oranges, cabbage, carrots, lemons, beets.

Dead or alive?  One of the great joys of rooftop agriculture is the chance to eat your plants alive.   Once you do, it’s hard not to look at the shiny products in the supermarket produce aisle as vegetarian road-kill.

Posted in Apples, Beets, Broccoli, Carrots, Cooking and Eating, Eggplant, Green Beans, Kale, Lettuce, Parsley, Peaches, Spinach, Urban Agriculture and Food Policy | 3 Comments

Finally, a professional

Posted on October 12, 2012 by

BRTG hosted an event recently where the sponsor engaged Peter Doyle of Peter Doyle Photography to take photographs.   With Peter’s permission I thought I would share some of his work with readers of this blog who, for two years, have patiently tolerated the distinctly amateur photography efforts of the gardener.   So now, without words, Battery Rooftop Garden as seen through the eyes of a professional:

 

Posted in Blueberries, Chard, European Pears, Guests, Herbs, Photos, Seen From the Battery Rooftop Garden | 3 Comments

Awesome

Posted on August 2, 2012 by

In the world of ornamental horticulture, perhaps because of the pervasive influence of our British cousins, etiquette demands a certain reticence when discussing one’s own garden.   Pausing with guests before a spectacularly rare and difficult Tricyrtis, one might be allowed to comment that it’s “rather special;” anything more enthusiastic would be distinctly bad form. 

I am pleased to announce today the “urban agriculture” exception to this rule.   As pioneers pitted against a skeptical establishment, urban gardeners should be encouraged to gush, enthuse, boast and proselytize in any manner that gets the attention of their fellow city-dwellers.    So here it is: BRTG in early August is simply awesome.   The quality and variety of the food available for harvest this morning was beyond every expectation I had when setting out on this experimental journey.   The peaches, nectarines and pears, undamaged by critters, announce their perfect ripeness by dropping into your hand.  The blueberries and blackberries bear in stubborn abundance, and explode with flavor when warmed by the morning sun.  This morning marked the first harvest of sweet red seedless grapes from the roof, which will be the subject of a subsequent blog.  Malabar spinach, kale, chard and lettuce seem never to show any signs of the daily harvest, effortlessly replacing the departed greens.  ‘Jaune Flamme’ and ‘Lolipop’ tomatoes beg to be eaten whole for breakfast.  Even the tiny fraise des bois (or perhaps, fraise des toit) continue to offer their tiny wild treat.

Posted in Asian Pears, Berries, Blackberries, Blueberries, Chard, Fruit, Grapes, Malabar Spinach, Nectarines, Peaches, Photos, Strawberries, Tomatoes | 1 Comment

Just Food

Posted on July 26, 2012 by

Tuesday night, at 11 venues scattered around New York City, generous and lucky diners celebrated the food of the season, the urban farmers who produce it, and the chefs who render it delightful.  This event, billed as “A City Farmer, A Chef and a Host,” was organized by, and for the benefit of, Just Food and The Sylvia Center.   Battery Rooftop Garden hosted one of these dinners.  Our farmer was, of course, our own Annie Novak, who with her associate Melissa Metrick seeds, plants, tends and harvests our rooftop produce.  Our chef was the spectacularly talented Howard Kalachnikoff from Gramercy Tavern.  Just Food also dispatched to the roof, as our “celebrity co-host,” the brilliant Eric Sanderson, Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society who, with colleagues, developed the pivotal Human Footprint map and, to the delight of many New Yorkers, recreated the Manhattan of 1609 in his book Manhatta: A Natural History of New York City. 

 

During the afternoon, Annie and Melissa harvested from the roof, in no particular order:  baby celery, Malabar spinach, plump blackberries, basil, tomatoes, three varieties of kale, four varieties of chard, small purple and orange carrots, blue and yellow potatoes, rats-tail radish blossoms, scallions, onions, beets, lavender, several varieties of mint and red veined sorrel.   Chef Kalachnikoff, not entirely trusting to the adequacy of our on-roof supplies, supplemented this with ingredients procured by Gramercy Tavern.   After lingering over watermelon mint mojitos and a series of exquisite vegetarian hors d’oeuvres, the following meal (to the best of my morning-after recollection) emerged from the kitchen over the next 3.5 hours:

 
Island creek oysters, plucked from the sea the same morning, garnished with on-roof miniature celery
 Chilled carrot soup (from off-roof carrots), garnished with on-roof carrot slivers, and a delicious spiced Labne (a middle eastern fresh cream, but this time made from yogurt)


 
Citrus cured Arctic Char served in a bed of roof-top greens and cucumbers


 
A beet-centric composition, too jewel-like to be called a salad, in which the flavors of the beets mingled with roof-top blackberries, meticulously de-veined Red Veined Sorrel and roof-top Lavender 
 
A striped bass, which Chef Kalachnikoff informed us had returned to season only last Wednesday, sitting on a bed to toothsome roof-top kale and garnished with summer squash

Sweet Corn Agnolotti, which everyone present agreed was a rare example of culinary perfection, garnished with roof-top onions, tomatoes and basil


 
 
Elysian Fields rack of lamb, cooked rare, sitting on a strongly flavored bed of Red Quinoa and roof-top Swiss Chard

A tart featuring rooftop blackberries and blueberries, with Anise Hyssop and a companion scoop of Strawberry Ice Cream

I urge the readers of this blog to visit the web sites of both Just Food, www.justfood.org, and the Sylvia Center,   www.sylviacenter.org. These two organizations remind us of the many the reasons it is vital to reconnect all New Yorkers – especially children — with fresh healthy food, and the vital role that urban agriculture can play in making that vision a reality.   And last night’s dinner reminded those fortunate enough to be present that the culinary arts rank alongside art, music and literature as pillars of human civilization, and that the eating of fine food in congenial company ranks as one of the great pleasures afforded to us as human beings.

Posted in Chefs, Cooking and Eating, Guests, Meals and Menus | 4 Comments