We have grown microgreens for the college culinary arts program.
We also have Basil and sometimes lettuce in our NFT system using commercial computers and channels. Our latest systems include cluster tomatoes in bato buckets producing fruit from Oct to June. So we moved across the road to the large greenhouse and now occupy 3600 sqft
They worked great, but we quickly learned that this hoop house had very little 'control'. Our second system moved into a hoop house. Almost all of our produce is sold at the Farmers Market on Saturdays. It also has expanded so the classes with a 3 hr lab could handle all the student activities. The progression of our system is classic of a small business expanding and finding better ways to do things. Students taking the class harvest produce each week, test water parameters, train the tomatoes, plant basil and lettuce as well as mix fertilizers.Ī recent report (2012) indicated that over 1 million acres of food production are under cover around the world. Hydroponics and aquaponics are great ways to teach science and can lead to increased student interests in STEM. Our goal is to provide valuable hands-on training and theory in producing high quality food crops indoors and out. Our hydroponic, substrate and aquaponics production systems were in response to our students' requests.