Rooftop hydroponics on NYC: serving produce from upstairs

This is my kitchen, we built this whole place, we built this, the building is 100 years old if you're today, yeah, a few times, six lights, well that was dead space, there's no real other option, it's not like there was a backyard. Vico, huh, I knew we had a Cold Year this year, late winter, but most of the things you see now are about eight weeks away. There are approximately two weeks until harvest. Those are a week away. Hydroponics naturally made sense for this location, so what you see here is running water and it pumps through the center and drips down the sides of the tube and all the plants have their roots inside the tube.

It's what we call a rainwater system, so it recycles through its own reservoir, so basically we have liquid soil, the roots grow internally. and we drip the water from the sides and everything is captured at the bottom and we recycle it to control evaporation, it feeds the plants that we grow vertically, which gives us better space management, it is the same as growing in the ground, but not there is ground It's just water, water retains nutrients. Hydroponics is like soil in that no soil is self-sustaining. You have to supply it with nutrients, so what I have here are nutrients that would be fertilizers.

The click you hear is the dosing system. Those nutrients. From the two containers they go to the New York tap water, which is powered by solar energy and then stored in a tank here now the tank is elevated a couple of feet above the garden floor, which naturally feeds each of these towers that all have a float that keeps them at a certain level without using any energy does not require much more than the technology in the setup it is much more difficult to farm conventionally the other benefit is that there is no way I would have land on this roof, we couldn't do it , the roof can't hold, the century-old building would collapse, so now the dead space is used to

produce

fruit for my restaurant in the same place, so this is a bib lettuce ooh, it goes in the little net there and the roots grow inside the tube so the other benefit is to keep my lettuce with totally live roots attached and I pull it out when I want it at its size the size I like and I leave the roots attached until I use it I call it dormant it's not that vegetables that have been grown for consumption and not for storage or transportation naturally taste better because they have not been gassed they have not been treated with anything it is totally organic my tomatoes and herbs never see a refrigerator I pick what I need when I need it yes, I have a hoist, it's here today we just have a small bucket here, we hang it on the side and then it comes down, we fill it with herbs and lettuce and Whatever it is, sometimes we need it, we have a bigger container, but a lot of times we only cut out small amounts, so that helps ship things out and then it falls right out the back door of the kitchen.

Here we have a two-color traditional pumpkin, that's a baby. And do you think you'll get more pumpkin? I could cut out a lot. I cut so many last night. I cut maybe 60 flowers and about two dozen pumpkins and let's just say this morning it was ready to go. I mean, it will double in size overnight. Yes, good. sometimes twice as fast for lettuces like Bibb lettuce is more than twice as fast as it would grow in the ground. I think it's because it extracts the nutrients faster. There is no resistance and there is no difference in taste.

Here's a fennel starter and there's a fennel ready to be. it was taken out, you see the bulbs out of the water, the timer just went off, it only clicked 3 minutes every 12 minutes, the system does not pay for itself, there is a small initial investment, but yes, it definitely pays for itself, so everyone we will be for me I hope it makes sense in the city there is no land here using dead space to grow vegetables I think it is the way to go that we cannot claim because in this city it is just cities no I think it makes sense everywhere in the home It has In addition, growing vertically is more ergonomic, just as a city grows vertically.

I think in the next 10 years it will be very common. I think we are certainly seeing the future.