GOSHEN — A partnership between Goshen Community Schools and Goshen Health is taking root. A total of 10 aeroponic tower gardens were given to the school through a grant by the Indiana Department of Health.
“The grant fit really well because it was focusing on some of the health priorities that have been identified in our community with obesity being one of them and also access to healthy food,” said Goshen Health Community Engagement Manager Stacy Bowers.
Chamberlain Elementary, Model Elementary, Parkside Elementary, Prairie View Elementary, Waterford Elementary, West Goshen Elementary, and Goshen Intermediate School all received at least one tower garden. Some schools began growing plants in the gardens in late fall, while others, like Goshen Intermediate School, opted to wait until the new year.
“The idea is introducing to kids healthy behaviors at an early age, and this is a great way to introduce kids to foods maybe that they haven’t had, and being able to connect that back to the curriculum, because food is so much more than what we just eat or see in the grocery store,” Bowers said. “This is a small part of that bigger picture.”
Aeroponics is a form of hydroponic gardening where plants essentially sit in the air and are watered periodically, in this case, through a timed system.
“Basically, it’s like a rain showerhead,” explained master teacher Andrew Kauffman.
The seeds are put into Rockwool, which acts as a potting soil for the aeroponics system. Because of the open space in the container garden setup, the roots grow longer, reaching down toward the water, and grow faster than plants would in the ground.
The tower also boasts its own lights, allowing the garden to be completely self-sustaining and mobile. Lights on Goshen Intermediate School’s towers run for 17 hours a day, and the water and plants maintain the temperature of the building at 70 degrees. It makes for some variability in the growth of each plant on the tower, depending on the species’ unique needs.
“We try to stagger the lights because if they’re all in the same level then the levels up and down will get different amounts of light,” Kauffman, said, explaining that the process has been a learning experience for the teachers too.
Some may generally require less light, or prefer another temperature, or more or less water. Even Kauffman, who is an experienced gardener, has been studying how the plants are different. With four types of lettuce and basil in the sixthgrade tower. “The way that I launch this too with my class is the idea of food scarcity,” Kauffman said. “In talking about food scarcity and food deserts, half of our kids don’t know where their food comes from. … That’s something that we really try to expose them to so they have better background knowledge and they can actually talk about it.”
Kauffman said at the beginning of the process, he asked students to guess how long it would take for leaves to begin appearing and responses ranged from 21 days to over 400 days.
“One of the things that (students) really appreciate is just even being able to see something grow,” Kauffman said. “I support the STEM teacher, and so I’ll be in there and kids will come up to me like, ‘Mr. Kauffman, what’s this one again? What’s happening? Is it growing? Why are these not growing? Are they dead?’ And I’m like, ‘Well they all grow at different rates.’” Teachers are integrating the gardens into math lessons, art, writing, problem- solving, and more.
“We use second grade to boost that curriculum, and also just boost some of that excitement for IREAD,” said Goshen Community Schools Coordinator of District Nurse Services Wendy Swallow. “Eric Wolf, at Model, as soon as it’s done and it’s full, they have a salad party in the classroom.”
Units were dropped off after fall break, and teachers were offered training. At Model Elementary School, the tower is working on its third crop already.
Students are involved in almost every aspect of the two gardens at Goshen Intermediate School, measuring pH, helping plant and fertilize, exploring the ways the plants are impacted by variables, and even tasting the different foods produced.
“Even learning about acids and bases, that’s something they’ve never done,” Kauffman said. “The other thing that happened in sixth grade today was when I put the fertilizer in, I had them with me and I showed them on the back of the fertilizer bottle, ‘this has nitrogen, this has iron, this has phosphate in there. What are these things?’ ... And then a sixth grader made the connection to the periodic table. There’s a lot of different things that we can do with this.”