2012 November 1: Rooftop Coldframe Construction

Winter 2012

Lab work wanes

Plant work waxes

Lab to Landscape...

still feels like 
theory & practice
of

 experimental design 

November 1: Rooftop Coldframe Construction

The DePaul University Department of Environmental Science & Studies debuts an urban agriculture course taught by Barb Willard who during the same quarter helps students initiate an Urban Agriculture Club called Urban Farming Organization (UFO). 

Students from both the course and new club begin work on building cold frames in preparation for the coming winter.

Step 1:  Making space

The Department of Environmental Science & Studies is housed in the LEED certified (gold rating) McGowan South building on DePaul's Lincoln Park campus. Equipped with two greenhouses and a rooftop garden the building offers us a resource to conduct research on ecological and horticultural plant studies. Our focus for urban agriculture was to see what food production we could start immediately this fall and while we had the garden available to us, it was not quite ready for us!


The garden was originally landscaped by a firm hired in conjunction with the building architects and planned before the department could consult with the landscapers on what uses the garden might have for us. Originally the garden held native plants: coneflowers: yellow (Ratibida pinnata) & purple (Echinacea purpurea), New England asters (Aster novae-angliae), Red Osier Dogwood (Cornus sericea), and a grass I'm not sure of because I'm infamously terrible at botany but I think it's Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) - if you can see it in any photos and i.d. it, let me know!

McGowan South rooftop garden summer 2011(corn on right side from a biodiesel experiment, i.e. not a typical planting)!

Now that we've had a few growing seasons with the roof we've started using it more in a way that supports the academic and research pursuits of faculty & students and maintenance of the garden has involved weeding (MUCH), pruning, cutting back, and planting more species. At the time of the cold frame project the coneflowers and dogwood had taken over much of the space and the asters had died out. The cold frame project started by removing much of the extraneous dogwood shrubs (no worries, though, all found new homes through being adopted and transplanted!). It took a few days but we were easily able to remove enough plants to clear space for three cold frames.

Students working to remove weeds, dogwood shrubs, and coneflowers to create cold frame space.

Step 2: Constructing Cold Frames

 Meanwhile, back in the greenhouse wood was being brought in, power saws were being figured out (no small feat!), windows were donated, and the students set out to construct the cold frames board by board by using simple instructions found online.

Student Kathleen Cook works the power saw!

1 frame complete, 2nd frame window installation begins

Because our windows were donated they were not all the same size and some time was needed to understand how best to fit the windows on the frame

We had a misfit between our windows and the frame size. We needed to decide whether to adjust the space on the side as shown above or in between the windows as shown below.

We decide to add a thin strip of wood in the middle because putting one on wither side blocked sunlight from the east and west ensuring the plants below would be blocked for more of the day.

Kathleen and I installing the window hinges

Step 3: PLANTING!

Next we did the fun dirty work of planting plants to overwinter during the upcoming cold season.

Plants left over from previous summer transplanted

Seeds started in greenhouse to fill-in space in frames or to replace any loss of transplants