The Food Project’s rooftop garden is on top of a Boston Medical Center building. This is one in a series of stories describing the challenges and benefits of farming four stories up.

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On Tuesday mornings I had the pleasure of taking volunteers or youth up to the roof to harvest, weed, and do general maintenance. I joined the team towards the end of the season, taking over for Rowan. When I think back to my time on the roof, one word immediately comes to mind: tomatoes. This year we had a ridiculous amount of tomatoes – so many that we didn’t have enough crates to harvest them all. It was a constant race to keep up with the tomatoes. The good news was that we could snack while working, and let me tell you those tomatoes were quite tasty. We also had fun throwing the rotten ones into the compost. Now I don’t know what it is about rotten tomatoes, but they are very conducive to throwing and everyone seems to have an irresistible urge to do so. At least we had an excuse.

I also think of a man named Bob. No, not Bob our former Farmers’ Market Manager. But Bob the Boston Medical Center employee who came out on the roof virtually every Tuesday to buy produce from us. Super friendly guy, very talkative and always really appreciative for the fresh produce. “Whatda we have today?” he’d ask, with a thick Boston accent of course, even though he knew exactly what we were growing and bought exactly the same thing every time (a few peppers, a couple tomatoes and an occasional eggplant). He’d get a real kick out of finding his own produce (“Ah! Look at that beauty!”), so I’d leave some ripe ones on the plant if I could.

The season ended up being a huge success - we grew a total of 2,600 pounds, four times as much as last year and a new record! We also used 120 crates of compost at the end, which was a feat in and of itself. Imagine shopping carts piled high with compost being taken up 4 floors in an elevator (in a medical center) and then being pushed through the hallways out to the roof – not an easy task! Needless to say it was a strange sight, but tons of fun. Even more exciting, though, is that our urban grower, Danielle Andrews received second place in Mayor Menino’s Garden contest in the community service category. The award honors gardeners who have improved the city with their projects. Congrats Danielle!

Starting in late January, we’ll be working with our Academic Year Program, the DIRT crew, to develop a plan for the rooftop garden to ensure its success and hopefully surpass our totals from this year.