MANCHESTER, N.H.- Do you know where your lettuce comes from? For a group of Bakersville kindergartners, the answer is a big white machine in their hallway. The farmers? The students themselves.
“My principal said there’s this opportunity, if anyone is interested, to write a grant, to get a hydroponic growing system,” said kindergarten teacher Jennifer Green. “I’m sort of the crazy plant lady here!”
The Flex Farm Hydroponic System by Fork Farms was purchased through the Farm to School grant, which awarded $5,200 to the school at the beginning of the school year. The fully self-contained device uses a standard electrical outlet and holds more than 200 plants at a time, taking up just 10 square feet of space.
The school was able to purchase enough supplies for the system to last for two years, including seeds and rockwool, a sterile growing medium made from spun volcanic rock used to plant the seedlings in.
Green decided on lettuce for the school’s first crop, but a variety of seeds were purchased for future use, including vegetables, herbs and leafy greens. She says it took about 6-8 weeks from planting to harvest.
“This was our initial planting, I was sort of the guinea pig to figure out how everything works.”
The device arrived at the school in December, and Green and her students got to work planning their indoor vertical garden. The Project-Based Learning activity gave students the opportunity to plant their own seeds and transplant the seedlings into the hydroponic machine while learning about the growth stages of plants. In the coming days, they’ll harvest their first crop of lettuce.
“As we walked by, the kids would say ‘look! It’s growing!’ And now that it’s growing out of the top, they’re so excited.”
The learning won’t stop with this harvest. Green hopes to experiment some more with the lettuce by trimming the leaves to see if it will continue to regenerate.
“It’s fun and interesting for me as well as the kids, especially in kindergarten, if you are excited about something, it’s contagious.”
Green says the school’s second graders recently finished a unit on life cycles, and will get a turn with the hydroponic system next, taking lessons learned from the first planting to improve the process.
“These Project based Learning activities serve as authentic learning experiences that students can take with them long after they’ve left our schools,” says Nicole Doherty, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning. “We are so excited about this project and the knowledge our students will receive from it.”
“I’m hoping the excitement will spread and teachers in other classes will show an interest in planting because it’s open to anyone in the school.”
