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,   

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

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

shrugging off the snow with ease:

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.

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 19^th and early 20^th 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 21^st 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. 

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 35^th 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.

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 35^th 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.

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.

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.

Spotted and photographed by Jeremy Law, this dragon is a Common Blue Damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum) (both damselflies (suborder Zygoptera) and dragonflies (suborder Anisoptera) are commonly referred to as “dragonflies”).  This small, brightly colored insect usually inhabits small ponds and rivers.  The eggs of the Common Blue Damselfly hatch — and the larvae, called nymphs, live — in the water.   Nymphs climb out of the water up a suitable stem to molt into damselflies.  So, to ask the obvious question, what’s it doing at an urban roof-top food garden?  Could the two small fountains provide the necessary habitat, with their double-helix design perhaps inspiring the parent insects to add their genetic diversity to the garden?

Ancient cartographers used the phrase “here be dragons” to signify the unknown.  Jeremy’s investigations, and my own experience growing plants on a green roof, suggest that urban agriculture is indeed terra incognita.  We have a lot to learn.

I have fed the seed pods of this plant, which looks like a cross between a green bean and a snap pea, to various visitors to BRTG.  For a few seconds, most are unimpressed, thinking it to be a rather pedestrian pod of no particular pedigree.  But soon, the sharp after-bite kicks in, and the typical taster asks, “Is this some kind of pepper?”  Only a professional chef of considerable renown immediately identified the flavor as radish, showing that most of us taste with our eyes and not the tongue. 

This heirloom plant is easy to grow, tolerating New York’s summer heat, and is long bearing, with attractive and edible flowers. 

It was introduced to England from Java in 1815, and gained significant social standing when introduced to the Prince of Wales’ garden at Sandringham.  It received a favorable mention from Andrew Jackson Downing in 1860.  A now, a perfect, easy growing, tasty and versatile addition to urban green roofs.

That’s right.  No bowls.  No spoons.  No popping two in your mouth at once to save time (this is slow food, after all, and who wouldn’t want to extend the exquisite pleasure of eating berries fresh off the bush).  

Because each berry tastes different, when we eat a spoonful or handful all at once, we get a blended generic flavor.  Think blended Scotch Whiskey.   But eating them singly, you realize that each is different.   In some the predominant note is sour; others are cloyingly sweet.  Each of those extremes actually masks what is unique about this food, which is the ineffable, incredible and nearly-lost-to-civilization authentic flavor of blueberry.  It cannot be described in terms of sweet and bitter.  When the sugar and acid are well-balanced in a single berry, they cancel each other out, leaving the essence of blueberry to emerge.   That flavor is flat, situated somewhere between strawberry, banana and grape.  Not showy at all.   And full of sun, like a simple Chianti.

Eating blueberries alone is also a treat for the eyes.  It forces you to survey the bowl with each pluck, deciding between the buxomy allure of the plumpest individuals, and the tantalizing promise of a small, slightly glossy berry, tinged with purple, suggesting the wildness of the uncultivated Vaccinium.

Speaking of cultivation, the happy result being achieved at BRTG may be due to good morning sun, a highly acid soil mix used for the blueberry bed,

and an annual top dressing of peat moss to keep up that acidity.  In addition, blueberries seriously hate drought, and on many weekday mornings I supplement the generally effective irrigation system with some supplemental hand watering.   There is nothing special about the cultivars, though, consisting of three commonly found in commerce:  ‘Bluecrop’ (the earliest), ‘Chandler’ (a bit later) and ‘Darrow’ (a late season bearer). 

Robert Frost was fond of blueberries,

Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come.