The old Growing Edge printed magazine ran an article on the Seminole County (Florida) Jail hydroponic garden way back in 1996.
The jail’s hydro garden is still going strong providing the inmates with educational skills on growing plants and supplying fresh food for the jail’s cafeteria.
Abraham Aboraya writes in the SeminoleChronicle.com,
Walk into the Seminole County Jail. Wait for clearance, then go to the hallway to your left. Pass through one door out into the open air. Through one more door right in front, and you’ve found the Seminole County Jail’s secret garden.
It’s a lush greenhouse, filled with enough vibrant green hydroponic lettuce to feed salad to upwards of 1,000 prisoners once a month. Then there are the tomatoes, also hydroponically grown, which feed the staff every eight months. And there are fish too, thousands of Tilapia, which feed the staff, although they’re not hydroponic.
Click HERE for the rest of the story.
Photo credit: SeminoleChronicle.com
Eric Mortenson of The Oregonian newspaper reports,
It was a combination of things that drew Grace Dinsdale back to the family farm 28 years ago, where she transformed a struggling dairy into a profitable plant nursery. One was the simple joy of growing things. Another was a complex sense of stewardship.
Both are at play in the project rising from the ground at her 130-acre Blooming Nursery. There, workers are installing an array of towering solar panels that will stretch nearly the length of the nursery’s 700-foot driveway. Nearby, a crew is applying insulating foam to a covered concrete tank that will hold 300,000 gallons of water.
When finished, it will be Oregon’s largest application of solar thermal energy. Instead of producing electricity, the solar panels will heat the tank water, which will circulate underground and warm the plants growing in a 54,000-square-foot greenhouse.
Click HERE to read the rest of the story.
Photo credit: Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian
This is the type of greenhouse operation that will start being built across the U.S. Why transport tomatoes thousands of miles when they can be grown in greenhouses near the consumers who buy them? Intergrow Greenhouses was started as a small operation in 1998, expanding to their current location in Albion, New York near Lake Ontario in 2003.
The greenhouse utilizes sustainable practices such as eco-friendly predator insects are used to control harmful pests, rain water captured on rooftops is stored in a pond for use in the green house, the rain water is then filtered and recycled for plant irrigation, emission-free electric carts collect and transport the harvested tomatoes ready for shipping, a biomass boiler burning waste wood heats the greenhouse instead of fossil fuels or electricity, and carbon dioxide emissions from the boiler are recycled with the CO2 used to increase photosynthesis and plant production in the greenhouse.
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, receives a lot of sunlight in the winter months. A Thunder Bay man hopes to utilize those solar rays to grow vegetables throughout the winter with two, four by eight-foot solar panels, thermal blinds and a heat-retention wall built into the greenhouse. Click HERE to read about Leo Hunnakko and his prototype greenhouse which he hopes will show other Thunder Bay residents that they too can grow food throughout the winter months.
Photo credit: tbnewswatch.com
Bunny Guinness writes in Britian’s Telegraph.co.uk,
I suppose I am a bit of a traditionalist at heart and if challenged would defend glass as the best material for greenhouses, cold frames and the like. Any ”working’’ garden with a brimming and beautiful greenhouse and some cold frames complete with clusters of plants in various stages of training or development gets me far more excited than any shop window in Hatton Garden. Now it seems I have been left behind. Many gardeners in Europe (especially Germany) are using polycarbonate rather than glass, while over here we remain largely unaware of its many virtues.
With the massive trend in ”grow your own’’, many more gardeners are finding that if you have some permanently covered space, you can raise plants in an environment where they can establish to a stage where they are less vulnerable to the vagaries of weather or peckish pests. The payback period for a traditional pukka greenhouse would, if assessed in purely financial terms, probably make it cheaper to have your vegetables shipped from Fortnum’s weekly. But off-the-peg polycarbonate greenhouses start at less than $330, have improved considerably in appearance and can easily be assembled by two people in under a day.
To read the complete story, click HERE.
Photo credit: Telegraph.co.uk
Paul Hudak watches the plow chisel through the sod of the baseball field. Hudak grimaces each time the plow hooks clank. Has the driver punctured something hidden under the soil — maybe pipes?
Hudak’s farmer friends have told him he is crazy to try to convert the field at Terra Nova High School into a productive student farm. And his untested idea of a student-run business selling produce to subscribers won’t fly, either.
The new teacher will need to win over those students, quickly. He will peddle seeds, talk about soil pH levels and try to muster interest.
Click HERE to read the whole story.
Photo credit: Faith Cathcart/The Oregonian
In Nigeria, a sustainable farm and school training center is being built which includes a 30 acre training center, a dormitory for 20 students, a simple classroom and dining pavilion for 30 students, a production facility for the tilapia fish farming and hydroponic vegetables raised with fish waste, a water wheel pump to circulate water from the river to the ponds, bio-gas system, and other related infrastructure. In the masterplan, space will also need to be planned for a future demonstration village of eight homes where some graduates will manage fish ponds, gardens, and animals.
Frank Mustac writes in nj.com,
Ben Walmer, principal in the Somerville, N.J. based architectural firm, LiMN Architects, recently returned from rural Nigeria where he donated eight days of his time and professional expertise to help children and families step out of poverty and into a world of hope, the company announced in a recent press release.
The planned sustainable farm/school that will educate Nigerian farmers in sustainable aquaculture and aquaponic practices. The goal of the group was to provide the knowledge and infrastructure necessary for local farmers to raise high protein, all-natural fish and vegetables.
The project must be designed to be electrically self-sufficient because existing Nigerian infrastructure does not supply consistent power to the area … We have to create a system that will use fish, chicken, human, and other organic waste to generate power in prior to being utilized for the fertilization of fruit, vegetable, and fish feed crops.
To read the complete article, click HERE. Photo credit: nj.com
A new hydroponic greenhouse at Rio Rico High School in Nogales, Arizona will help train students in the agriculture science program for possible future careers in raising crops in commercial greenhouses. Arizona is the leader in both colleges (University of Arizona) offering degree programs in Controlled Environment Agriculture and commercial greenhouses growing hydroponic vegetables (Eurofresh.)
Mary Donnelly writes in NogalesInternational.com,
Students from Rio Rico High School were shoveling gravel into wheelbarrows recently while others raked the piles smooth on the floor of two new greenhouses on the east side of Interstate 19, just south of the Peak Canyon exit. Sweaty brows didn’t distinguish their smiles as visions of the tomatoes and hanging baskets filled with flowers they would soon be growing filled their heads.
“It’s good exercise for the muscles,” said Leslie Carranza, a 4th year student in the Santa Cruz Valley Unified School District No. 35 Agriculture Science Program. She is also secretary of the Future Farmers or America (FFA) club at the high school. She would rather be riding horses but loves anything to do with agriculture, she said.
To read the whole story on the greenhouse at Rio Rico H.S., click HERE.
Leonora Oppenheim writes in Treehugger.com,
Can you imagine being able to produce enough water in the Sahara to grow crops there? Can you imagine harnessing sufficient quantities of solar power to supply electricity to cities in Africa and cities in Europe? Can you imagine producing a sustainable bio-fuel that doesn’t impact on world food supplies? Charlie [...]
Thieves stealing expensive plants is a phenomena that is happening all over the country. Some people are waking up to find that loved and well cultivated rare plant or tree in their front yard was dug up by plant thieves overnight. Garden art is also susceptible to thieves who think free is a very good [...]
The old Growing Edge printed magazine ran an article on the Seminole County (Florida) Jail hydroponic garden way back in 1996.
Hydroponics Dictionary
