Indoor Agriculture with 4th Graders

Fourth graders at Clearview Elementary in Hanover, PA, are having an incredible learning experience watching plants grow without soil in their very own Fork Farms! With the Flex Farm, students are learning what a plant needs to grow and all about hydroponics with videos and lessons from Farmative. Our first adventure was setting up and building our vertical hydroponics system. We worked as a team to put it all together when it first arrived. Then, we filled it with water and learned about PH and nutrient levels. We found the magic number that we needed for our nutrients then added equal amounts of Nutrient A and Nutrient B to get the minerals just right for our plants to grow. While we were setting up the Fork Farms, we also planted our first set of seeds for green leaf lettuce. When they were ready and our levels were correct, we transferred our baby plants over into our Fork Farms. We had planted 150 plants for our first growth cycle. Our 4th grade students were amazed by how fast our little plants grew! In less than a month, about 28 days, we were ready for our first harvest. The only maintenance required was weekly refilling of water and checking of our PH and mineral levels to make sure that our plants had the best growing conditions. We were amazed by the long roots that grew down into our water tanks!

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Seeing our plants grow from tiny seeds into green leaf lettuce that we could buy in a store was amazing. Our Harvest Day was a celebration! We all enjoyed our crisp, delicious, and nutritious lettuce in a yummy salad in our classrooms. We each got to take green leaf lettuce home to share with our families too. We had so much fun with our first harvest that we decided to grow another batch of lettuce. This time, we grew romaine lettuce. We chose to only grow about 50 plants for our second harvest and shared them with our cafeteria staff to use in our school lunch. After a month of growth and maintenance in our Fork Farm, we had a beautiful crop of romaine lettuce that became part of our school lunch salad with pizza. We were so proud of our hard work and the ability to grow our own food!

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Overall, our journey with our own Fork Farms has taught us so much more than just how plants grow. We have learned about science, responsibility, and teamwork. We have learned how plants share resources, and they need plenty of space to grow their best. We have even learned how to clean our Fork Farms as we shut it down for our winter break from school. Growing plants hydroponically in our Fork Farm has shown us that with a little bit of curiosity and science, we can achieve amazing things like growing sustainable and nutritious food with only a small space! We are looking forward to growing basil as our next crop in the new year!

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