Restaurants Grows Its Own Greens on Rooftop

Photo courtesy: Growing Your Greens/Video screen capture

Rooftop gardens are becoming a more common sight nowadays; and, the trend seems to show no sign of diminishing. The truth is that rooftop gardens may become a necessary agricultural alternative if we expect to be able to feed the world's population in years to come. As more and more people are forced to move out of the cities and into surrounding fertile areas, the less agricultural land is left. With the population increasing and viable agricultural land diminishing, feeding our burgeoning population will require creativity and flexibility when using our resources.

We've seen a supermarket growing produce on its roof in London, and Brooklyn looks set to be the home of some massive rooftop farms in the near future.

But rooftop agriculture doesn't need to be big, nor does it have to be high tech.

Here we see Jon of Growing Your Greens visit Catch A Healthy Habit Cafe in Fairfield, CT where the cafe owners have been growing food on their cafe roof for the customers below.

Clearly, the group has started out small. But that's a pretty smart strategy — too many projects burn out after the first year as first-time gardeners get over ambitious and bite off more than they can chew. And clearly, as Jon shows, in the context of a cafe garden, there are some plants (peppers, for example) that will have a hard time contributing much to the demands of the business. But from kale to nasturtiums to herbs, there are plenty of options out there that either yield large amounts of food for minimal effort, or offer high value products that would otherwise have to be paid for.

Check out Jon's recommendations for next year in the video below.