Saratoga Elementary School won a grant in October for a hydroponic system, and recently, the school reaped the ultimate reward — eating what they grew.
A hydroponic system, according to Adelaide Myers, library aide at Saratoga Elementary, is a medium to grow plants that doesn’t use soil. The vegetation can be angled at almost any position; all that matters is that it is receiving light and water. “And basically it’s just some heavy-duty mesh we planted the seeds from little plugs. And we planted them at about one to three inches tall.”
The water runs up from the bottom of the container, up through the gutter and runs down the gutter. This and the light positioned equally among the plants enabled the vegetation to flourish.
The project started when Myers applied for a grant to receive the hydroponic system. In the proposal, she was looking to have a pizza party using the ingredients that were grown using the structure. In October of last year, she was notified that the school received the grant and that the materials would be sent out.
Although the grant provided the school with the system, there were a few things missing that made the endeavor more difficult. Seeds were not included — and Myers did not know where to start with finding them. “Finding seeds … have you ever tried to find seeds in December?” Myers asked. “I was frantically calling all over the state trying to find the seeds.”
However, many in the community were able to help out with that problem, and they ended up finding all of the seeds needed.
A couple weeks ago the entire school was able to eat pizza that contained a various number of ingredients that were grown from the hydroponic system.
Tristan Smith, Ethan Bartholomew and Jeffery Johnson, fifth grade students at Saratoga Elementary, were students who were more involved with the project, loved the pizza and what it represented. “That was pretty cool with making the pizzas with all of our plants. I think that was pretty cool eating what we made,” said Smith.
One of the most interesting things they discovered about the hydroponic system was the condition the plants were capable of growing under. “It was really cool to plant plants in the library without having to take up a bunch of space with the planter, since its vertical,” Smith said.
“It was fun to do it in the winter because usually you can’t grow plants in the winter,” Johnson stated.
Bartholomew saw value in the system for growing plants. “Its probably something we could use a lot more in the future. And its nice cause you can do it in the winter, especially for starting seeds.”
Although it was not always possible for all of the students to be involved in the growing process, there were lecturers that regularly came in to talk about indirect connections relating to the hydroponic system.
“Jean Runner from SERCD talked about soil and how water moves through soil and the reason we wanted to do that was because with the hydroponic system we aren’t using soil,” Myers stated.
Meteorologist Don Day lectured the class about why the Saratoga region is so windy.
“We had Don Day come in and talk about the climate and the weather in Wyoming and he gave us this demonstration where he was like “just blow” so we got the whole school together and did this then he said “blow with your mouth like this [moving to put two thumbs on either side of your mouth],” Myers demonstrated. You could just hear the noise.”
That ‘noise’ is what wind is, and their thumbs were representing mountains.
Overall, Myers found the project to be very successful, a great experience for the students, and the students gained a better sense of the natural environment as well as wanting to experiment more with planting in unusual conditions. After seeing plants grow vertically in a school library, they wanted to see what else plants could withstand.
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