Student Builds Floating Garden Farm on the East River
Posted By Molly Cotter On August 22, 2012 @ 12:20 pm In Green Space,Queens,Water | No Comments
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We’ve seen New Yorkers plant produce everywhere from rooftops [5] to parking lots [6], but now there’s even a floating garden coming to the East River. Karim Ahmed [7], a 22-year-old architecture student at The Cooper Union [8]will soon be anchoring his floating garden into Long Island City’s Anable Basin [9] as an experiment in hydroponic [10] harvesting, and the 20-square-foot raft will sprout sunflowers, kale, corn, and a baby nectarine tree. The floating garden is an attempt to rethink how we grow and obtain our food on this concrete island of a city, and it could spark an awesome new aquatic agriculture trend!
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Ahmed had long been interested in the ancient “chinampas” [12] or floating crops of Mexico City. Giant elevated barge-like rafts have been used to grown corn and crops in the city swamps [13] for centuries. Ahmed began a Kickstarter [14] campaign and enlisted the help of Boswyck Farms [15] in Brooklyn to build and fully understand a prototype garden. He then fashioned the structure together at a parts shop in Bushwick [16].
The floating garden does not use soil, but instead feeds the plants with a water system that blocks outs chemicals and hungry fish. Ahmed’s creation now sits anchored in the Anable Basin, which was also an area recently scouted for a floating beer garden [17]!
via DNA info [18]
images © DNA info [18] and Karim Ahmed [7]
Article printed from Inhabitat New York City: http://inhabitat.com/nyc
URL to article: http://inhabitat.com/nyc/floating-garden-farm-to-pop-up-in-long-island-city/
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[3] Email: mailto:?subject=http://inhabitat.com/nyc/floating-garden-farm-to-pop-up-in-long-island-city/
[4] Image: http://inhabitat.com/nyc/floating-garden-farm-to-pop-up-in-long-island-city/karim-ahmed-floating-garden-4/
[5] rooftops: http://inhabitat.com/nyc/brooklyn-grange-worlds-largest-rooftop-farm-kicks-off-second-growing-season/
[6] parking lots: http://inhabitat.com/intexure-architects-transform-parking-garage-into-a-rooftop-zen-garden/
[7] Karim Ahmed: http://afloatinggarden.blogspot.com/
[8] The Cooper Union : http://cooper.edu/
[9] Anable Basin: http://wikimapia.org/5470862/Anable-Basin
[10] hydroponic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics
[11] Image: http://inhabitat.com/nyc/floating-garden-farm-to-pop-up-in-long-island-city/karim-ahmed-floating-garden-1/
[12] “chinampas”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa
[13] city swamps: http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/979-mexcaltitan-nayarit-an-island-city-in-the-swamp
[14] Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2033286349/a-floating-garden?ref=8fz6y3
[15] Boswyck Farms: http://www.boswyckfarms.org/
[16] Bushwick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwick,_Brooklyn
[17] beer garden: http://inhabitat.com/nyc/floating-beer-garden-on-repurposed-ferry-coming-to-long-island-city-queens/
[18] DNA info: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120822/long-island-city/floating-garden-coming-long-island-city
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