This post is part of a series called Roof Garden Rookies, which explores my attempt, as an amateur gardener, to grow a garden on the rooftop of my building in lower Manhattan. Check out my roof garden in a recent feature in the New York Times.

Cukes are twisting and turning their way up the stakes as I’m training them to, and green tomatoes and baby eggplants abound. With nearly three weeks of rain behind us (which made the broccoli and the beans happy, but not so much the squash) the garden is verdant and overflowing its boxes.

And six weeks after planting, the garden is sharing more and more of her bounty.

Yesterday, I harvested a Stupice and a Green Zebra tomato, as well as a little Sungold which I popped right into my mouth (same goes for the strawberries, which are so few I consider them a gardener’s snack), two zucchinis: one small and one large, and a couple turnips for dinner last night.

It is not uncommon for a neighbor to peek up onto the roof while I’m popping off dead flowers, either to say hello, take in the fresh air, have a picnic, or all three. I can tell the garden has added to our collective quality of life as a building; it simply dresses up the roof and makes us want to spend time up there, admiring the unobstructed views of the empire state building, amid the flowers blooming their heads off and the vegetable-potential high above the noisy bars and men riding bikes pimped out with boom boxes in the Lower East Side. The bamboo fencing adds to the serenity, that is until a bird of prey swoops over head while I’m eating dinner with a friend at our makeshift table (a new planter, yet to be filled, turned on its side) and manages to snatch up a white pigeon in midair, and then glide back, ostensibly to its lair, to dine as well. Nature, in New York City!

We’ve also had visits from beneficial insects, like the ladybug on the dill flowers to the left, and the bee parade that comes every morning. We have not been without aphids, and some leaf-eaters, too, but the damage has been marginal.

Along with the just-picked lettuces I’ve been nibbling (as have the neighbors, who proudly tell me in the hallway), the sorrel was bushy and ready for eating. I’d never prepared it before, so Yann and I looked online for a recipe for the easiest soup I’ve ever made (or watched being made), sorrel soup, which is great for the big stringy leaves that aren’t as fun to chew on raw. The recipe was so simple that I kept offering to go up to the bed of herbs and snip some thyme, chives or basil. “Are you sure?” I asked Yann. “Yes,” he insisted. “Just wait, the sorrel has a lot of flavor.”

I washed the bundle of sorrel, the significant leaves of four, first-year plants, and snapped off their stems. Then he placed them in a pot with a splash of olive oil, salt and pepper, and turned on the heat. The leaves sauteed while he diced potatoes and I watched. The pot was opened moments later for the potatoes, which were tossed in, along with six cups of water. When the potatoes were soft the heat was turned off, then the contents were pureed, and served over a dollup of creme fraiche. There is nothing like eating fresh from the garden, in the garden, so it was back up to the roof. He wasn’t wrong about the soup, it was delicious.

Sorrel Soup

(serves four)

Approximately 2 cups of sorrel leaves, cleaned, stems trimmed
2 big russet potatoes
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
6 cups of water
creme fraiche to dress

This post is part of a series called Roof Garden Rookies, which explores my attempt, as an amateur gardener, to grow a garden on the rooftop of my building in lower Manhattan.

For the past two weeks, some of the building’s residents and myself have been on the roof non-stop, getting the garden ready for its debut this weekend at our annual shareholder’s meeting. We hauled lumber, soil, plants and other materials, up 6 flights of stairs (no elevator!), to create a living space on our brand-spanking new roof. First thing was first, we needed to build the raised beds.

We chose cedar for its ability to withstand rot for longer than other woods, and because we found a deal on 1″ x 8″ planks upstate, 1/3 of the price of the cedar in the city. We had considered plastic planters, but it seemed the potential to leech chemicals was too great, and besides, they weren’t as nice looking.

A little bit of math, and I figured out how many boards we’d need. Luckily, Lowe’s made cuts for us, saving us time and a sawdust sandwich. In addition to 1″ x 1″ posts for mending the corners of the bed together, we also picked up some hardware: 1 5/8 inch stainless steel square head deck screws, which will not rust outside and go into the wood like butter!

With these boards, we built 16 ” high rectangular beds. For the bases of the beds, we were fortunate to have kept slats from our roof deck in a woodpile in the backyard. We pillaged that pile (simultaneously destroying a pigeon brothel that had formed over the year), cut the lengths we needed and connected the cedar boxes we’d made to their bases.

Our plan was to build fifteen beds, six large planters at 6 ft x 2 ft, three smaller planters at 4 ft x 2 ft, and six even smaller planters, which ended up being window boxes at 8″ x 5 ft. In order to distribute their weight on the roof (an engineer assessed our weight allowance at 60 lbs/square foot) we placed the beds in a “u” shape around the perimeter, and the window boxes would follow formation, hanging from the parapet.

Our next challenge was to prepare the main beds for soil. Essential to this process is creating drainage in the bottom of the bed so that heavy rains can easily find their way out of the planters. We started by placing screens over the widely spaced bottom slats (also notice the metal mending brackets, used to prevent bowing), and then filling the beds with drainage material: packing peanuts.

On the ground, most beds would use rocks for drainage. But since weight was an issue for our beds on the roof, Kerry Trueman, expert from Retrovore who has been helping us on all aspects of the garden, suggested using packing peanuts. And why not? they won’t be touching the soil or plant roots, so no possibility for leeching. They are 95% air, and would otherwise end up in a land fill. Sounded perfect. Only problem was, I didn’t want to buy them new.

Luckily, I reached out to my network of New York friends (Thank you Kerry, Janine, Jenni, Leah, Erin and Yann!) and was able to mobilize peanuts, mostly from their various workplaces, which I want to name check here because they do great work: Eat Well Guide, Recycle the City, and The Mill.

Following the peanuts, a quick addition of landscape barrier fabric helped to keep them from flying away (so did the addition of bamboo fencing, which serves as a great wind break), all stapled into place and ready for soil. Look out next week for my planting report, and more photos of what is growing up on the roof!

Starting a rooftop garden requires tenacity and a good plan. Tenacity because there are more hurdles to climb in order to plant your roof, including assessing weight limits and reading the fine print of tax abatements.  If you are like me and live in a multiple-resident building, you’ve also got to present your neighbors with the pros and cons, and hope they’ll be so excited by the former that they agree about allocation of funds for your project.  Meanwhile, you have to devise a plan.

In the plan, both infrastructure and timing must be accounted for.  As a newbie gardener, I’d been nervously awaiting my seeds, and excitedly preparing to get my hands dirty.  But first, it was important to know how to proceed with 1000 square feet of roof space.

I started by consulting books and the wisdom of gardeners like the folks at Retrovore, and my other food fighter friends – in sum, an eager team of gardening enthusiasts (we’re bringing back community!).  Together we came up with some preparatory planning to create a lush, edible landscape that takes into consideration the unique planting opportunities and the difficulties presented by the roof.

For one thing, the rooftop is unprotected, and is thus windy.  To shelter our raised beds, we will need to construct a windbreak of evergreens along the sidewalls, which should be both aesthetic and purposeful.  (50 feet of young Canadian Hemlocks, $156) Fortunately, beds for these evergreens can be built from the pile of free, recovered wood currently hanging around in the back of the building. Score! But for growing edibles, planters have to be constructed from untreated wood. I’ve found a great source for salvaged, untreated wood at Build It Green in Queens, where wood starts at 15 cents per foot.

One of the benefits of being so high up is the access the plants will have to lots of direct sunlight.  This means good growing but also a need for strategic watering, like a drip irrigation system set on a timer. Watering close to the surface will help prevent water waste, and a timer will ensure we are watering in the early morning when the temperature on wilt-worthy summer days is cool. A rain censor is an added bonus, stopping the flow after a rain.  Irrigation is one of the more expensive aspects of the garden budget, at an estimated $350, but considering my status as a green gardener who doesn’t want to kill everything, I think its a wise investment.

Another important consideration is soil.  You don’t want to haul any old dirt you find up to your roof for your garden. And if you are planting directly in the ground, please get your dirt tested.  Luckily in New York we have the Lower East Side Ecology Center, which produces compost from New Yorker’s table scraps and makes a potting soil (featuring perlite, green sand, black rock phosphate, vermicompost and coconut coir – a sustainable alternative to peat moss), which they sell to the public, and deliver! Cost for soil that can be a permanent support for our garden for years to come: $500 for 1000lbs.

The garden may seem expensive to some, at our estimate of $2000.  But we are starting from scratch, and have decided as a collective to make an investment in energy efficiency, and in the creation of a living space, where we can save money by eating what we grow.  It is my hope that Councilman David Yassky’s Green Roof Tax Abatement (an extension of the J-51 abatement) passes, allowing us to recoup 90% of our costs. But at worst, we know we are making a great investment.

Stay tuned for the next post in the Roof Garden Rookies series, where I will be talking about starting my seeds.

Growing up in suburban Oklahoma in the 1980s, I was three generations away from my farming ancestors but ate more prepackaged food than greens. Having spent the last decade improving my diet, I can now say I am ready to try my hand at growing some of my own food – on my rooftop in Manhattan.

Beginning this spring, I am planning to install (with the help of great neighbors and garden-savvy friends) a roof garden with raised beds for growing crops. I will record my experience on Civil Eats, in a series titled “Roof Garden Rookies,” because I am literally starting out green. I hope that this series breaks down the process into easy to swallow bites, and that readers feel empowered to try to grow some of their own food too.

Aside from the word from my garden-savvy friends, books have helped me start to get my head around this exciting but scary task:

• Eliot Coleman – The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener
• R. J. Ruppenthal – Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting and Sprouting
• Tanya L. K. Denckla – The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food
• Linda Yang – The City Gardener’s Handbook: From Balcony to Backyard

The first step before we get started was to have an engineer establish how much weight our rooftop can handle.  We are lucky to have recently rebuilt our rooftop, including new joists.  However, to stay on the safe side, our raised beds must be filled with special lighter-weight soil and must be easily drained to maintain 60 pounds per square inch or less (this includes wintertime with a layer of snow on top).

My next step was to begin to plan what I’d like to grow.  To begin, its good to take note of your hardiness zone.  According to the National Gardening Association, New York City is in zone 6B, but because we are container and raised bed gardening on a rooftop, I have been advised to go to the next zone, 6A, with an average minimum temperature of between -5 and -10 degrees F.  It also doesn’t hurt to take a look at The Farmer’s Almanac, which gives advice on when to get your seedlings planted, so you can then plan either the growing of the seedlings in seed starting trays or when and where to acquire them.  I’m going to try to start most of my seedlings myself, which means I need to get started!  The Almanac is suggesting that I get seedlings in the ground for many of the the crops I want to grow by late March – early April.  As for what I’d like to grow, I first came up with a list of things I like to eat.  From that list, I’m going to try my hand at tomatoes, a few different lettuces, herbs, chard, carrots, beets, squash, celery root, cauliflower, bush beans, kale and maybe blueberries.  I will be placing my seed order this week, and then soon, starting my seeds inside my apartment.

Upcoming, the series will discuss tools and seed starting, building raised beds, preparing the soil, designing a roof garden structure, maintenance, and will break down the mistakes and (hopefully) successes, so that next year’s version is even better.  Keep an eye out, and I’m looking forward to your suggestions, comments and questions.

Photo: A blank slate – our roof at present.