Green Manure on the Roof
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 12:53PM 
To start out the food production phase, we saw benefit in the implementationof green manure and no till farming. Green manure has been used to increaseorganic matter, earthworm activity, and increase nitrogen content in soils.However, the limiting factor in terms of green manure implementation was thespace required for such a crop. Companion green manure crops were alsoconsidered, but the competition for water and nutrients with the food cropsled to a roof green manure crop. This would minimize the impact on thefarm’s food production, and would allow the building area to participate inthe crop rotation and soil fertilization. The structure would incorporatebins on the roof, which would contain soil (to a specific depth required bythe specific green manure) and green manure. When the crop has reached itslife span, it will be cut down and left to decay in the soil on theroof. Thesebins would have a hinged door, which would open up to allow the fertilesoils to slide off the roof into catchment to be transported to the foodgrowing area. At this point, the topsoil from the recently harvested foodcrop would be placed in the roof bins, and a green manure crop would beplanted to repeat the process. The soil would already be tilled as it isapplied to the food growing area by virtue of being moved to and from thebuilding roof.
Danny Tappel
Tim Olson
-- Tim Olsontimothy_olson@wsu.edu360-901-0409
Reader Comments (4)
I like the idea of saving space, but at what cost. I see a large structure needed to support the weight presented by this system. Secondly the shadow that this visual shows would create an amount of useable growing space to be less then accomodating to crop yield. If this was maybe incorporated into the structure of the barn?? Or housing for grazing animals??
You describe how the green manure would come off the roof but how would we put the new soil and crops into the bins to start the process over again? The soil is heavy so carrying it up a ladder would be very hard to do. Would you put in a lift system - how would it be powered; manually or electrically or...?
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