Meet The Godwins on Their Rooftop Garden

A Quick Tour of the Roof Top Garden
November 10, 2017

Stewart G.


The RTG's faithful subscribers have asked and we shall oblige - please come along with us on a little photo tour of the RTG. Right now we have 22 raised beds in which we have almost 450 square feet of growing space. On top of that we also have six GreenStalk grow towers giving us an additional 60 square feet. That's a whopping 1.17% of an acre - on the roof!

So as soon as you exit the stairwell and enter the rooftop proper you have our berry box immediately in front of you on the southern face of the building. The berry box has six of our raised beds containing black berries, blue berries, and raspberries.





Immediately to the left (east) of the berry box is our tool shed.





As you walk back past the door to the stairwell heading northwest on the roof you will pass the pool. Not exactly an integral part of the RTG but certainly a great place to relax after taking care of the garden and part of the rest of the family's sanity stabilizer. As you pass the pool the main garden box is immediately in front of you on the north face of the roof.





Continuing north on the roof as you enter the center of the main box you will notice three large AC units. Again, not the best tings from a growing space point of view and this would all be for naught if those things weren't running a good nine months out of the year - so we built around them. Back to the right (east again) we have our six GreenStalk vertical gardens.





So that's the physical layout of the boxes. Now we can get to the good stuff - what's in them! We'll start in reverse order with the GreenStalk vertical gardens. There's a lot of things growing in the GreenStalks and there was no real pretty way of mapping that out graphically so the table below will have to do. The picture above is taken between towers 5 and 6 with 1 and 2 in the far back of the image.





In preparing the RTG we did a lot of research on what should vegetables should be compatible neighbors, how much space individual plants needed, and the best way to lay everything out. In invaluable tool in that effort was the Old Farmer's Almanac's Garden Planner. Using the planner we were able to get the most production out of the space we had and lay everything out virtually before heading up to the roof with seed and spade in hand. The image below is of all 22 raised beds and our original planting for this season. The planner automatically tells you how many plants of each type you can place in the space that you have and when you save your plan and resuse it from year to year it will also help you with crop rotations.





So there you have folks. We hope you've enjoyed our little virtual tour. This is the first season the RTG has been in this location and configuration so we're still tweaking things here and there but so far we've had a fairly productive season and are finally starting to get some return on our efforts. Berries, melons, tomatoes, zucchinis, and corn are all following or fruiting. The herbs are establishing themselves and even the lettuce towers are starting to hit their pace. We were hoping for a late November harvest but that may be moving into December. Everything should be ready by January and by Feb I'd imagine we'll be replanting for another season before the summer heat hits. Check back often folks to see how things are growing! And as always, thanks for your interest and continued support of the RTGQ8!


More details and orders can be placed on their website [link].


LWDLIK - Wow! Just wow. I've been thinking about our roof for a while now and this has certainly motivated me to do more than think.