Boswyck Farms » hydroponic presentation

Boswyck Farms Makes an Appearance on NY1!

sara — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:35:36 +0000

Boswyck Farms is proud to be a part of an ongoing project with United Cerebral Palsy. Check out our recent cameo on NY1, where you can see our Operational Hydroponicist Alex Middleton giving a lecture on the basics of hydroponics, and part of our hydroponic set up at the facility.

Watch the 2 minutes clip from NY1 here.

In Brooklyn, It’s Mad Easy Being Green

meghan — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:36:17 +0000

Stephanie Berzon from the Brooklyn Food Coalition stopped by in May to check out the farm and interview Lee for the blog, “It’s Mad Easy Being Green”. She wrote a great piece about our farm, that you can check out here. This is a wonderful blog that follows the green movement in Brooklyn and the greater NYC region. She covers a lot of the urban farms that are popping up in the region and various local foods related news that’s happening. We love getting visitors to the farm and are fortunate that there are so many bloggers, journalists, filmmakers, and the likes, that are interested in what we are doing! Thank you Stephanie for stopping by! We highly suggest that after reading our article, you check out the rest of her blog because there is a lot happening with the greening of our neighborhoods and she does a fantastic job of covering it!

Brooklyn Spaces!

meghan — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:33:44 +0000

Brooklyn Spaces recently stopped by the farm to interview Lee and learn more about our operation. Brooklyn Spaces is a fantastic blog that documents interesting spaces around the borough and contacted us to do a piece a few weeks ago. Thank you Oriana for the wonderful write up! Click here to read the article and add Brooklyn Spaces to your RSS Feed as Oriana posts some great pieces about other fascinating spots around Brooklyn.

Also, than you to everyone who stopped by the Bushwick Starr for Bushwick Open Studios this weekend. Though the “L” train was not running this weekend, we still had quite a few folks stop by and check out our rooftop farm. We met some great people and luckily, the weather was beautiful and cooperated nicely, despite being sandwiched between to scorching weeks. The plants are growing quickly on these hot days and we will be posting pictures soon!

Big Green Theater – 4/22 & 4/23 (Gala)

meghan — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:37:56 +0000

This weekend is the premier of the Big Green Theater at the Bushwick Starr. We will be at the BGT Benefit Event on Saturday, enjoying some great theater! If you haven’t already bought your tickets to the event, we strongly encourage that you buy them in advance. The Benefit Event will have drinks, refreshments and a dj providing some great tunes, and most of all, you can step out onto the roof top for the second season unveiling of the roof top farm! We will be there all day today, working hard to get the system up and running, excited to get growing season off to a great start!

See you this weekend!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE2bSTJzEqk

Soda Bottle Workshop at MS 217 in Queens

meghan — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:56:59 +0000

On Friday, March 25th, we packed up the van for it’s inaugural trip and headed to Queens to lead a Soda Bottle workshop at MS 217. It was their annual Family Science Night and we had the wonderful opportunity to teach the 6th graders about various hydroponic systems along with assisting the parents and their children in building their own self irrigated planting system. The kids at this green magnet school were very receptive to the projects and really enjoyed building the systems. The school provided them with basil and oregano seeds and in the next couple of weeks, they will be seeing their hydroponic systems growing delicious herbs on their windowsills!

Cosecha de rábano

Joanna — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:16:30 +0000

August 23, 2010

By Joanna

Who doesn’t love a good radish? (Actually I don’t but that’s a whole other story.) We’ve had our first radish harvest! Some are sweet, some pungent and some right in the middle. Planted a little over a month ago, they grew up to be quite healthy and happy in our flood & drain system. Lee decided the radishes are so good that he’s done another round of planting. These new ones are slated to be part of our hydroponic systems demonstrations and will make their premiere Sunday, September 12, 2010 at Farm City Fair.

[[Show as slideshow] click on an image to watch in the dark using arrow keys]

Thanks for another fabulous workshop

Joanna — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:16:52 +0000

August 2, 2010

By Joanna

We just wanted to say many thanks to everyone who attended this past Sunday’s workshop, Getting Started With Hydroponics. We had people from all walks of life including teachers, architects and even a lactation specialist. Our participants asked great questions and were pros at building drip systems.

If you were at the workshop (or attended earlier ones), please take pictures of the plants growing in your systems and send them to us!

Bushwick Open Studios a Resounding Success

Joanna — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:21:57 +0000

June 7, 2010

Bushwick Open Studios was this past weekend. Hot and humid as it was we threw open the doors to the farm, inviting people in to see our seven different hydroponic systems. Those who came got to eat a little of our arugula, watercress and lettuce, not to mention Lee’s homemade and perfectly salted popcorn. (Our peppers and tomatoes were not quite ripe enough to sample but should be there momentairly so make arrangements to visit if you want a taste.) The recently planted strawberries have taken to their new vertical system and we were happy so many people admired how pretty they looked. Several people made hydroponic planters out of recycled soda bottles, seeded them with the basil of their choice and took them home to start a windowsill garden.

A tip of our hat to the peeps over at Arts in Bushwick for organizing another fabulous event. We’re looking forward to next year’s open studios!

Boswyck Farms Talks to The Naturalist

Joanna — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:05:28 +0000

5/10/2010

Today Lee and Chloë will be interviewed by Bernie Wides on his show, The Naturalist. They’ll be talking about hydroponics, the work we do at the farm and our upcoming programs. The show airs between 12:00 and 12:30. Tune in if you can. It will also be available as a podcast.

The Naturalist is a daily radio program on Heritage Radio Network.

Boswyck Farms Rocks NYC Grows

Joanna — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:40:04 +0000

We like to give a big thanks to NYC Grows for inviting us to participate in this year’s festival. A huge event that marked the end of Earth Week celebrations in the city, it drew urban farmers, community gardeners, eco-crafters, sustainable technology creators, chickens(!) and more.

The day dawned with a torrential downpour–the gutters ran with deep streams of water, Union Square was a giant puddle. Nevertheless, Lee and Chloë packed up the clown car with our mobile kitchen cart, tubes, buckets, pumps and plants. With a table strapped to the roof they drove from Bushwick to meet Joanna for what turned out to be a great day, despite the deluge.

To be honest, the weather about killed our excitement. With rain pouring off the roof of our tent, we wondered–with the slightest hint of irony–if it was necessary to find water to fill our hydroponic systems. We decided it was and as Joanna went off with buckets she heard it remarked more than once, “Why is that woman looking for water?”

Late morning brought a surprising twist of fate. The sky became less ominous and the rains let up. By noon we had people swinging by our tent to see what was happening. We had several homemade demo systems on display. We set up our large NFT system in the front of the tent. Our aeroponics system was going strong and a huge, hot pepper plant was growing in our drip system. (We grow all our plants from heirloom seeds.) People were psyched as Lee and Chloë explained the beauty and relative simplicity of home hydroponics. We’re pretty confident we won some converts.

The other big seller was our free “build your own passive hydroponic system” workshops run by Joanna. Made from recycled soda bottles, gaffers tape and cotton rope these systems are a perfect way to introduce hydroponics. (We often use them in our school programs.) We originally envisioned the workshop to be for kids but it turned out that lots of adults wanted in on the action. Approximately 30 soda bottle systems were built and planted with basil. People also left with a package of nutrients and Chloë’s Boswyck Farms pesto recipe.

The only downside of the day was that we weren’t able to break out our one-of-a-kind mobile kitchen cart. It was just too wet to have people kneeling on the ground to make farm fresh pesto.

All in all we had a fabulous time. We hope to get the chance to participate in next year’s NYC Grows. In the meantime, keep checking back to see what we’re up to.