Walla Walla Valley Farm to School Garden Club and Hydroponics Club
I’m Nadja Goldberg, a sophomore Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies major. Before
I started interning with Walla Walla Valley Farm to School last Fall, I had no idea you could
grow huge heads of lettuce or vines of cherry tomatoes without any soil at all. For the past two semesters, in addition to helping out at outdoor elementary school gardens, I have been going to Hydroponics Club at Green Park Elementary every Wednesday, where fourth and fifth graders experience the magic of growing their own vegetables indoors. The club is run by Nathan
Brennan, or Gardener Nate as the kids call him. He operates two vertical hydroponics systems at the school that provides the plants with everything they need to flourish: water circulating through the system, nutrien
t solutions to add to the water, and a bright light shining on the plants. The kids planted their first seeds in October 2022, putting lettuce seeds in rockwool, a substance with a high capacity for holding water and oxygen. When little sprouts emerged, we transferred the rockwool bundles to the hydroponics system. I loved seeing the kids’ amazement at how much the leaves expanded and multiplied each week. In about a month, the kids had their first harvest, and Nathan brought some salad dressing to make a yummy snack out of the lettuce. Since then, we’ve planted more lettuce, chard, basil, cherry tomatoes, and more. We teach the kids how to understand why something might be going wrong in the system. They have learned how to check the nutrient and pH levels of the water and how to add
more nutrients when needed. If a plant is dying, maybe another plant is blocking its access to light. Or maybe a seed didn’t sprout because it was stored in too cold a place. When we’re growing cherry tomatoes, the kids help pollinate the plant by tickling the flowers, pretending to be a bee and dispersing the pollen so that the plants start producing fruit. Observing Nathan as he explains to the kids what the plants need has shown me how to teach kids about gardening in ways that are simple, engaging, and convey the science. Nathan often
personifies the plants so that the kids can relate the needs of the plants to their own needs for food, water, and air. He talks about the importance of balanced pH levels
more nutrients when needed. If a plant is dying, maybe another plant is blocking its access to light. Or maybe a seed didn’t sprout because it was stored in too cold a place. When we’re growing cherry tomatoes, the kids help pollinate the plant by tickling the flowers, pretending to be a bee and dispersing the pollen so that the plants start producing fruit. Observing Nathan as he explains to the kids what the plants need has shown me how to teach kids about gardening in ways that are simple, engaging, and convey the science. Nathan often
personifies the plants so that the kids can relate the needs of the plants to their own needs for food, water, and air. He talks about the importance of balanced pH levels in the water by having the kids imagine that the plants have little mouths that open too narrowly if the pH is too low and too wide if the pH is too high, both resulting in nutrient deficiency: “Could you eat a hamburger if your mouth only opened this much? Could you eat a tiny piece of rice if your mouth was wide open like this?”
Learning how to run a hydroponics system is a valuable skill because it allows you to grow food without having access to available land. Hydroponics is also about 90% more water-efficient than soil gardening because the same water can be recirculated. In the future, I would love to learn about aquaponics as well, where fish live in the water and produce all the nutrients that the plants need.
Experiences like Nadja Goldberg’s are made possible by the Whitman Internship Grant, which provides funding for students to participate in unpaid internships at nonprofit, some for-profit, and government organizations. We are happy to be sharing blog posts from students who were supported by either a summer, fall, spring, or year-long grants at organizations, businesses, and research labs all around the world. To learn how you could secure a Whitman Internship Grant or host a Whitman intern at your organization, contact us at ccec_info@whitman.edu.