A close-up of the kale that was harvested from the garden
So much lettuce!
Almost five pounds of lettuce from one yield!
The yields from each tower went into several Seamless Summer meals over the past week. A sticker was made to attach to the 13 salads indicating where the food came from!
A close-up of the kale growing on the gardens
Crops are growing on one of three Tower Gardens at London!
As students at London return for the fall session, they may notice the cafeteria has become a little greener from when they departed in June.
This is thanks to the installation of three aeroponic Tower Gardens along the eastern wall of the cafeteria, serving as part of a pilot project between Community Consolidated School District 21 and food service management provider OrganicLife.
“We’re trying to bring fresher food to the kids, increase exposure to different items, and have them be able to watch where their food comes from and how it’s grown,” said Allison Brown, senior district manager for OrganicLife. “A lot of the time, they aren’t able to see that part [of the process], so it’s nice to give them that.”
The idea to install these gardens has been kicked around for a few years as an extension of the Harvest of the Month Club, in which the district participates. The district finally secured two towers before the end of the 2023-2024 school year, and added a third over the past month.
Each tower is made from UV-stabilized, BPA-free, food-grade plastic and employs aeroponics, which is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil. Each structure can also hold up to 32 plants, but are customizable to add more pods.
Brown and her team have already grown basil, kale and a gourmet lettuce variety in the gardens, all of which were added to meals provided as part of the Seamless Summer program (the basil was added to a pasta salad, while the lettuce variety produced about 13 salads). They are using this time as a “trial and error” to see what crops can be grown, how long each takes, and what the yield can inevitably be.
“It’s been fun to try and see what different crops we’ve been able to grow,” she said. “There have been a few occasions where we’ve taken a ruler and measured the growth, like ‘okay, this week it’s at two inches, maybe next week it’ll be at three inches!’”
Future crops include cherry tomatoes, snow peas, smaller cucumbers and other lettuce varieties “to see if we’ll get a larger yield,” Brown adds. No root vegetables can be grown in the structure, and it was not known whether certain kinds of fruit crops could occupy some of those spaces.
Once the school year begins, the aim will be to have the students help maintain the towers and aid in the harvest. Brown was also hopeful that a section of the food line could be decorated with signs or stickers, showing students that these food options come from the towers behind them.
The eventual goal would be to expand these gardens to the two remaining middle schools – Holmes and Cooper – and potentially down the line add them to each elementary school. “[The middle schools] sort of want to see how it goes here before they get involved in it, including how much work is involved. We have no set timeline right now for getting it into the other schools,” Brown said.
EMPOWERING EVERY STUDENT, EVERY DAY
