[1]
We’ve seen New Yorkers plant produce everywhere from rooftops [2] to parking lots [3], but now there’s even a floating garden coming to the East River. Karim Ahmed [4], a 22-year-old architecture student at The Cooper Union [5]will soon be anchoring his floating garden into Long Island City’s Anable Basin [6] as an experiment in hydroponic [7] 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!
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
Ahmed had long been interested in the ancient “chinampas” [14] or floating crops of Mexico City. Giant elevated barge-like rafts have been used to grown corn and crops in the city swamps [15] for centuries. Ahmed began a Kickstarter [16] campaign and enlisted the help of Boswyck Farms [17] in Brooklyn to build and fully understand a prototype garden. He then fashioned the structure together at a parts shop in Bushwick [18].
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 [19]!
via DNA info [20]
images © DNA info [20] and Karim Ahmed [4]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]