Johanne Daoust 2012 Rooftop SIP Garden
Sack Sip
Johanne Daoust in Toronto has new photos of her 2012 rooftop garden on Flickr. She converted her entire garden to sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) in 2011.
Johanne is a true SIP innovator. She shows a number of new ideas in this Flickr photo set. One of them is a "sack SIP" (photo left).
via www.flickr.com
via slowfoodnyc.org
At our newest project, Slow Food NYC will be supporting the YWCA of Brooklyn as they convert their unused rooftop space into a vibrant edible garden that can supply fresh, seasonal produce to the over two hundred women who live in their Atlantic Avenue location.
Join us, this month, to learn how to convert raised beds and planters to a sub-irrigated planter system with Frieda Lim and Bob Hyland, two Brooklyn innovators who are pioneering an easy, inexpensive way to irrigate container planters. Attendees will be converting existing planters and raised beds to a sub-irrigated system that is both efficient and inexpensive.
To learn more go to Bob Hyland's blog at www.insideurbangreen.org and Frieda Lim's website at www.slipperyslopefarm.us.
This is a great opportunity to volunteer your time and learn about some innovative new ways to irrigate your urban garden.
Time: Wednesday, May 16th; 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Location: YWCA of Brooklyn - 30 Third Avenue (off Atlantic Avenue); Brooklyn
For more info or questions please email Deborah Katz: Katzds@hotmail.com
We can thank Jose Luis Castañeda in Guadalajara, Mexico for giving us a link to photos of his rooftop garden. He has done a great job using Larry Hall's rain gutter sub-irrigation system. His pristine white bucket planters in perfect alignment on the rain gutter reservoirs have a pleasing look even without decorative concealment.
If these were on my patio, it wouldn't bother me at all to look at them. I also wouldn't be bothered by having to water them individually since the rain gutter float valve makes watering automatic.
Note in the bottom photo that he is also experimenting with sack planters on the rain gutter system. He also shows a bucket planter with side planting holes a la sack gardens. I'm not sure if it is irrigated on the rain gutter system.
I related to Jose's comment about the difficulty in changing embedded human habits. This is particularly true in home gardening when so many of its practices are based on folklore and family tradition often passed down from mother to daughter.
Since January 2010 i've been teaching people in Guadalajara, Mexico about sub-irrigation and believe me, hasn't been easy. At first, people don't understand the system, later they do, but they keep skeptical, finally they don't put into practice what they have learned, maybe i'm not that good at teaching. What i mean is that is hard to remove the idea of top watering and drain holes, i'm guessing this paradigm is worldwide.
Take a look to this photo album https://picasaweb.google.com/116282453914033980750/AltairaSubIrrigatedRooftopVegetableGarden it's our sub-irrigated garden on a rooftop.
There is another way to make a green roof and it's white. Instead of covering the entire surface of a building roof with plants, there is another way that is both green and white, with paint. Read more about it in the article below.
The bottom photo shows the roof of celebrity chef Rick Bayless’s Frontera Grill in Chicago. The roof is edible green with EarthBox type sub-irrigated planters growing red tomatoes that sit on a roof painted white. In my view, this is the best of all worlds.
We should have many more combo green and white roofs than we do. We can thank our laggard horticultural education for that. Thankfully, we have rooftop growers who are sharing their experience on the web about high productivity and water conservation using sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). We just need to get the word out that white and green is better than green alone.
A new study of how different white roofing materials performed “in the field” in New York City over multiple years found that even the least expensive white roof coating reduced peak rooftop temperatures in summer by an average of 43 degrees Fahrenheit. If white roofs were implemented on a wide scale, as the city plans to do, this reduction could cut into the “urban heat island” effect that pumps up nighttime temperatures in the city by as much as 5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, said the study’s lead scientist, Stuart Gaffin of Columbia University. (Credit: © D.aniel / Fotolia)ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2012) —
On the hottest day of the New York City summer in 2011, a white roof covering was measured at 42 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the traditional black roof it was being compared to, according to a study including NASA scientists that details the first scientific results from the city's unprecedented effort to brighten rooftops and reduce its "urban heat island" effect. Read more...
If you are not familiar with the Rooftop Garden Project in Montreal, it is arguably the best place in the world to learn about rooftop gardening and urban gardening on any level.
Short of going to Montreal you can visit their website and download a free rooftop garden guide (PDF).
They make and sell sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) in their local community (see below).
It is difficult to understand why community gardens here in New York and elsewhere are not doing this.
Learn more about them in prior posts including their partnership with the award winning McGill University Edible Campus.
The construction of the sub-irrigated planter (SIP) above and the one I called the Laptop of Fresh Food are basically the same. Neither of them require power tools to make. Both are very simple designs.
Watch the progress of an "instant rooftop garden" at the Harold Washington college, one of the seven City Colleges of Chicago. Using sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like these EarthBoxes it took a minimal amount of time and effort to create a highly productive and portable edible garden for the benefit of the students and faculty.
What you see here is only the initial test garden installed last summer. The plan is to expand the project throughout the City Colleges of Chicago system in the future.
The EarthBoxes were donated by the E.A.T. organization in Chicago. They deserve much credit for what they have done. Read more about the project on the Harold Washington college blog.
We would surely benefit from an E.A.T. type organization here in NYC where we seem to be stuck in the dirt. This too shall pass. The light of modernity is slowly dawning and it will happen before too long.
via eat-chicago.org
Johanne Daoust in Toronto has been most helpful in posting a series of photos with notes that show how she converted her rooftop garden planters into sub-irrigated planters (SIPs - known erroneously as "self-watering"). Her planters include a variety of round planters as well as traditional wooden raised beds one of which is shown here.
The raised bed is shallow (for growing lettuce and greens) so she made the water and oxygen reservoirs from 4" diameter perforated corrugated drain pipe cut in half lengthwise reducing the height to just 2". She used sheet plastic to make the bed watertight (it is black on one side and white on the other).
The photo below shows the all important overflow drain hole tube (lower left). This is the feature that is critical to keeping the system in balance and preventing overwatering.
She covered the reservoir pipes with landscape fabric. This prevents soil from falling through either the perforations or the open ends of the pipe.
This is a good idea and one that I will use in the future. Note that she folded back the landscape fabric in the photo (upper right) so that you can see the construction.
Here you can also see planter mix added to create the soil wicks (spaces between the pipes).
The next step is to fill the planter to the rim with planter mix before sowing seeds or setting starter plants.
See her Flickr photo set for views of how she converted other planters including ceramic with a drain hole into SIPs using methods very similar to what you see in the planter bed photos.
Tammy Scileppi did an excellent job of describing Frieda Lim's rooftop micro farm. Unlike the shipping container urban farm, you would not need a crane and a heavy-duty truck to move her farm. The sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) are easy to move with a hand truck and a van.
SIPs are highly productive, water and time saving growing units that are perfect for nomadic city life.
They are also the safest way to grow food in the city where the soil is often contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead and arsenic. So, why aren't more urbanites using them? All it takes is education and leadership that currently are woefully lacking.
You don’t need a green thumb to become a savvy gardener and urban farmer. We’re seeing a new era of personal food production unfolding, and it’s all about DIY and sustainability. With prices for fresh produce rising almost weekly, it’s the perfect time to learn how to grow your own. All you really need is a patch of outdoor space and ample sunlight—like a rooftop, balcony, porch, fire escape, or even a friend’s concrete driveway. A viable alternative for city folk, micro-gardens have amazing advantages over the old-fashioned kind.
From May to December, busy Brooklyn mom, Frieda Lim grows a bounty of succulent vegetables, herbs and edible flowers in her rooftop micro-farm atop the 2-family Gowanus home she shares with her husband and 4-year-old daughter.
Continue reading "Brooklyn » A Portable Micro Farm on a Personal Scale " »
If you don't know Cathy Erway, she is author of The Art of Eating In, a food maven and blogs about it.
In her spare time Cathy is also a rooftop farmer having launched a micro farm atop the Six Point Craft Ales brewery in Red Hook Brooklyn last year.
What is particularly unique about this micro farm is that Cathy crafted her planters from recycled beer kegs.
Last years creative idea has become even better since Cathy discovered the benefits of sub-irrigated planters (SIPs).
Having an open mind, she was more than willing to convert part of the micro farm to test the SIP concept. You can now think of these planters as SIP beer kegs for a bit of a pun.
You can read Cathy’s own words about the sub-irrigated keg planter test. She is overjoyed to see the superior growth of the plants in the SIP keg planters.
It’s high time I shared the revelation that’s come to our rooftop garden. This project has been months in the works, and years if you count the work of my consultants on this project, who have dedicated their life’s work to exploring and sharing the virtues of SIPs (sub-irrigated planters). And now that the sun has been beating down hard on the rooftops of Red Hook, these uniquely outfitted keg-containers have proven themselves so much worthy of the effort that was put into them. The plants in SIPs are really outdoing all the others.
Last fall, I became aware of a gardening tip ardently encouraged by a horticulturist named Bob Hyland, of Inside Urban Green. His recommended system for healthy, productive plants in tight quarters such as the city was by sub-irrigation.
Continue reading "Lunch at Sixpoint » The SIP a Keg Planter Project" »
via www.re-nest.com
source: Instructables
This is a great idea for a sub-irrigated (aka erroneously as “self-watering”) micro garden that can grow fresh food just about anywhere in the city.
While it will not fit on a fire escape like my salad bar, it will fit on a balcony, rooftop, driveway, row house paved patio or other paved surface. It would fit in most of the spaces shown in this neighborhood site survey I did here in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Elevated portable micro gardens like this will not only produce a ton of fresh vegetables but you will not strain your back growing them.
An elevated planter like has a second major benefit. The valuable space under it is available for storage. Remember that the sub-irrigated planters above are self-contained. There is no drainage to damage what is under them and if located on a balcony annoy the neighbors below with dripping water.
I would not make the tote box planters as described from the Instructables directions. It is an outdated method. These photos show a much simpler DIY tote box SIP made with recycled plastics, in this case ½ gallon milk containers. You could also make the water/oxygen reservoirs using inverted recycled nursery trays, or other recycled plastic food containers. The fill tube is made from recycled water bottles nested to fit.
The partial amount of soil is there to demonstrate the wicking system. Fill the SIP to the top before planting. The soil mix surrounding the reservoirs creates the wicks. It is a good idea to tamp the soil down with your fingers to improve the capillarity of the wicks. You do not need any yoghurt containers, pond baskets, PVC pipes, etc.
If I made this table I would hide the tote box SIPs. Draw curtains would be a simple way to do it and at the same time allow easy access to items stored below. Incidentally, the green tote shown was a Christmas item from a local dollar store. I do not like looking at blue or gray plastic boxes. I know…picky, picky.
There is more about this tote box SIP in a prior post that is also a Google Doc.
