For three years, the largest urban farm in Europe has been installed on a roof of the Parc des expositions in Paris: 14,000 square meters of market gardening. It’s in your naturein June 2020, had witnessed the first harvests.
(Rebroadcast from June 21, 2020)
Ici strawberries are shameless, and without soil: all bare, roots in the air. This is the technique of aeroponics, used in urban agriculture, and in the spotlight at Urban Nature, the largest vegetable garden in Paris, Europe and soon the world. Placed on the roof of Hall 6 of the Paris Exhibition Center, where the Agricultural Show takes place every year.
Automatic and multi-daily showers, enriched with nutrients, for these soilless plants. In a closed circuit, 90% of the water is recycled. About fifty strawberries are thus coiled in the cells of a plastic column. Which makes the square meter very productive. Vegetables and fruits vertically, like humans in their buildings, in a graphic setting.
In the mood of time
The urban farm is modern and ecological. It is more than ever in tune with the times, after the coronavirus crisis, which revealed the perverse effects of globalization. ” I believe that Urban Nature indeed embodies the famous world after “, underlines Sophie Hardy, the director of this urban farm which has just been born, and which aims, in two years, to be the largest in the world, with its 14,000 square meters of roof. Already 4,000 square meters of vegetable garden, strawberries, tomatoes, aubergines, Swiss chard or coriander… but also flowers. ” Here and there we have nasturtiums, borage flowers, to attract pollinators, and also to attract aphids, which will collect on the nasturtiums, and which will not attack the plants. »
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All these plants grow without soil. On an urban farm, we grow light, because we are on a roof. Here with a bird’s eye view of the ring road, just next door, with its incessant stream of exhaust pipes. A nice paradox. ” No, they are not polluted vegetables exclaims Sophie Hardy. ” Here we are on a roof at 15 meters high, so at this height, there are no more heavy metals. By definition they fall. As for the fine particles released by cars, it suffices to rinse the fruits and vegetables with water to be able to eat them. There’s no problem ! »
A little more nature in the city
About twenty species are cultivated. Next to the strawberries grows a pretty field of tomatoes. No land there either. Just a coconut fiber substrate, because it’s light. Kalia Gauthier, a young market gardener who works here, had to relearn how to work. ” We were very happy when we received our coconut loaves the first time, because it was our only relationship to the land, which is not the land… It changes a lot of things, and it also changes a point from a physical point of view. All plantations are at human height, we are no longer on all fours, we are no longer on our knees, and it is much better for the back ! »
Of course, urban farms do not have the ambition to feed all of Paris. For lack of surface, and because not everything grows without soil, like carrots or potatoes… potatoes. But at least there’s a little more nature in the city, as Sophie Fleury tells us. ” What surprised us, when we arrived on the roof, was that there were no insects at all. There was nothing. We were even a little worried. But a few months after our installation, we realize that we now have bees, ladybugs, aphids, butterflies… lots of little things ! »
Pollination is underway, and soon the vegetables will land on the plates of the restaurant located just next door on the terrace, Le Perchoir, whose chef only has to walk a few meters to pick tomatoes and basil: the short circuit the shortest in the world. The urban farm has also opened up a few squares of vegetable garden to its neighbours, who can rent them out year-round to grow their own vegetables.
« I stepped on a snail. Does that make me a murderer? »
Ouch! The snail’s shell, which serves as its home, offers the gastropod limited protection. As the hen’s egg protects the fetus from the chick until it is born. For the snail, the shell is until death. Useful against predators, heat and cold. But against the shoes, under the weight of a man, it’s more complicated. If your foot breaks the center of the shell, vital organs will be affected; it is certain death. If only the edge is crushed, the shell will be able to reform, thanks to the calcite that the gastropod secretes, limestone. But for that, the snail drools.