Greening the sky: Incorporating recycled inorganic materials in rooftop growing media

Summary

Abstract Rooftop agriculture is gaining popularity worldwide, although technical challenges, such as restriction on materials used in growing media, can negatively affect plant growth and yields. Incorporating inorganic recycled materials into rooftop growing media offers a promising approach to improving productivity while reducing the environmental footprint of these production systems. In 2022 and 2023, an experiment was conducted at Université Laval (Québec, Canada) to evaluate the performance of different growing media composed of crushed brick, mineralized mulch (MM), and foamed glass (FG), with or without perlite, for rooftop cultivation of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), lettuce (Lactuca sativa), basil (Ocimum basilicum L.), and tiny bok choy (Brassica rapa subsp. chinensis). Physic