Last week on Friday, as part of Arlington's "Urban Agriculture Month," Love & Carrots hosted a public tour of their ordinarily private rooftop garden at the Ten at Clarendon apartment complex where they showed visitors how to grow vegetables successfully in their own homes or apartment building.
During the tour, the director of garden programming for Love & Carrots, Carly Mercer, debunked common problems with urban farming, including a perception that it is hard to perform well.
“A lot of it comes down to frequent watering, pest control, and maintaining a deep enough level of soil,” said Mercer. "Many urban gardeners who grow herbs out of their balcony, she said, plant them in shallow pots that, unbeknownst to most, require watering every one to two hours."
She added that growing plants on a rooftop has its faults. “We can’t grow crops on a trellis, so things like grapes are out of the question. And with heavier winds, we had to rule out heavier produce — a butternut squash once went flying off of a rooftop.”
Love & Carrots aims to promote urban agriculture in the Washington D.C area by creating garden spaces for schools, non-profit, residences, restaurants, and residential communities. The gardeners would then stop by every week to maintain the plants.
Their garden at Ten at Clarendon provides the residents in the apartment with a monthly share of the fresh produce and every other week, a farmer from Love & Carrots lays out fresh harvest in the lobby for all the residents to enjoy.
When you are living in a small apartment, growing crops can seem like a faraway dream. But, local company Love & Carrots proves otherwise.
Last week on Friday, as part of Arlington's "Urban Agriculture Month," Love & Carrots hosted a public tour of their ordinarily private rooftop garden at the Ten at Clarendon apartment complex where they showed visitors how to grow vegetables successfully in their own homes or apartment building.
During the tour, the director of garden programming for Love & Carrots, Carly Mercer, debunked common problems with urban farming, including a perception that it is hard to perform well.
“A lot of it comes down to frequent watering, pest control, and maintaining a deep enough level of soil,” said Mercer. "Many urban gardeners who grow herbs out of their balcony, she said, plant them in shallow pots that, unbeknownst to most, require watering every one to two hours."
She added that growing plants on a rooftop has its faults. “We can’t grow crops on a trellis, so things like grapes are out of the question. And with heavier winds, we had to rule out heavier produce — a butternut squash once went flying off of a rooftop.”
Love & Carrots aims to promote urban agriculture in the Washington D.C area by creating garden spaces for schools, non-profit, residences, restaurants, and residential communities. The gardeners would then stop by every week to maintain the plants.
Their garden at Ten at Clarendon provides the residents in the apartment with a monthly share of the fresh produce and every other week, a farmer from Love & Carrots lays out fresh harvest in the lobby for all the residents to enjoy.
Last week on Friday, as part of Arlington's "Urban Agriculture Month," Love & Carrots hosted a public tour of their ordinarily private rooftop garden at the Ten at Clarendon apartment complex where they showed visitors how to grow vegetables successfully in their own homes or apartment building.
During the tour, the director of garden programming for Love & Carrots, Carly Mercer, debunked common problems with urban farming, including a perception that it is hard to perform well.
“A lot of it comes down to frequent watering, pest control, and maintaining a deep enough level of soil,” said Mercer. "Many urban gardeners who grow herbs out of their balcony, she said, plant them in shallow pots that, unbeknownst to most, require watering every one to two hours."
She added that growing plants on a rooftop has its faults. “We can’t grow crops on a trellis, so things like grapes are out of the question. And with heavier winds, we had to rule out heavier produce — a butternut squash once went flying off of a rooftop.”
Love & Carrots aims to promote urban agriculture in the Washington D.C area by creating garden spaces for schools, non-profit, residences, restaurants, and residential communities. The gardeners would then stop by every week to maintain the plants.
Their garden at Ten at Clarendon provides the residents in the apartment with a monthly share of the fresh produce and every other week, a farmer from Love & Carrots lays out fresh harvest in the lobby for all the residents to enjoy.
