Bgood Just Harvested 175 Pounds of Tomatoes Grown in Kiddie Pools
Bgood’s tomatoes growing on top of a downtown parking garage. Photo provided for bostonmagazine.com.
Local healthy fast food chain, Bgood, which has 11 Mass. locations, has been quietly growing it’s tomatoes and collard greens on the roof of a downtown parking garage—in kiddie pools. The project, now in its third year, is overseen by Green City Growers.
“The strangest site we have is our farm for B.Good restaurant downtown on the roof of Pi Alley parking garage, which consists of 25 kiddie pools filled with soil where we grow tomatoes and collards. We grow around 700 pounds of tomatoes there every year,” Green City Growers CEO and founder Jessie Banhazl told Boston last summer. This year, according to co-owner Jon Olinto, they’re hoping for 1000-plus pounds.
Olinto and his team harvested the first batch of tomatoes Thursday, and got a lot more then they expected. “Our first [tomato] harvest of the summer was 175 pounds from the roof,” he says.
Because the first harvest was larger than anticipated, Olinto says that they are packing up some to give away as gifts to our best customers. “About 20 of our best customers received a dozen tomatoes each,” he says. “We’ll average about 40 pounds per week for next four weeks and use them all in our restaurants.”
The company also has kiddie pools in Somerville that harvested hundreds of pounds of kale in mid-June. Tomatoes were planted in the same spot after that harvest.
Below, a video explaining more about how Bgood grows its own:
