Journal 4 (the last!)

William helpfully holds the tubing

This post marks the conclusion of my hydroponics blogs. It is time to connect through to the real world of WindowFarms.
http://our.windowfarms.org/2012/05/06/hydroponics-for-dorks-their-dogs/
There! Done! This blog is now live.
The plants have been growing happily this week. I have to keep rotating the fruit cup pots because they are now very lanky and bend dramatically towards the light every 24 hours. I decided against putting them on a timer because I like to check in and turn them. If the timer watered the plants then I would not be encouraged to look at the little lettuces as much as I currently do.
To be perfectly honest, I have not been doing very much for the hydroponics lately. But this was a planned lapse. Last week was dedicated to another (much more significant) environmental commitment. Our school was awarded the 4th in the nation Green Flag environmental award from EcoSchools! Just like the seeds have had to be tended before they are ready to be harvested, finally being awarded the Green Flag was the crowning glory concluding two years of exceptionally hard work.
Last week was full of very late nights preparing final touches for the visits scheduled for Friday - and hence the seeds took a momentary back seat.
On Friday, Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, Senator Jamie Eldridge, Representative Jen Benson, our Superintendent Dr Mills, Principal Dr Callen and about 200 other community members, teachers, and students celebrated our environmental achievement.
I was proud to say that the basil on the pizza served at the ceremony was grown at the school via Mr Clinton's hydroponics systems.
Great link to a video about the festivities:
http://acton.patch.com/articles/video-abrhs-receives-green-flag-award#video-9842411
As if Friday was not enough, early the next morning, I spoke at our town's water district centennial celebration. This event helped me to consolidate my belief that hydroponics gardening is exceptionally beneficial. We analysed maps of Acton's land and water use from 1912 and compared them to parallel maps from 2012. In 1912, 70% of Acton's land was farm land. Our per capita water usage was 90 gallons per day. Now in 2012, only 10% is used for agriculture. Our per capita usage dropped to 65 gallons. One of the main reasons that our water usage fell is due to the shift away from agricultural practices. Modern agriculture is the second largest draw of water usage in the world. If people converted to hydroponics gardening, human's water footprint would dry up.
It was a bittersweet moment when the Green Flag ceremony ended. In that moment it seemed as if everything I had been working so tirelessly on for two years had suddenly ended. Just like that - it was done. But this weekend I realized that my environmental work was never going to be done. It would not end until I wanted to be done.
I do not give up until I have achieved what I set out to do.
In that case, my work is far from over.
After the water ceremony on Saturday, I attended a 350.org CAN rally in Concord. What originally looked like a fuddy-duddy gathering of people dressed up as rainforest animals quickly shifted to a scientific and life changing presentation. A number of people were invited to the microphone to talk for 4 minutes about their 'dot' in the Connect the Dots campaign. For those of you who are not up to date with 350.org, it is a nonprofit, international climate change activism organization which is working to reduce the parts per million molecules of carbon dioxide back to 350 - the sustainable level. The Connect the Dots campaign gathers seemingly unrelated events such as extreme weather, famines, rising sea level, student activism (my dot!), corporations, gender discrepancies, and Thoreau and links them together to climate change. I was surprised and ushered to the podium where I gave an impromptu speech about students' role in the climate crisis. Apparently it was successful because I was rewarded with a standing ovation and asked to continue speaking beyond the time limit. A man followed my talk who absolutely blew me out of the water. He works for the Red Cross Climate Center and spends half of his time traveling to third worlds countries affected by climate change. He spoke to the need of having hard data to predict where the next big storm will strike. Immediately after his presentation he made a beeline in my direction and we began a long conversation about climate activism. I will be working as his assistant this summer in predicting where the Red Cross needs to send aid before El Nino wreaks havoc.
It is not over.
My environmental work is just beginning.

Photographs

Journal 3

Since last week, I completed the interview with Sir Clinton, contemplated the meaning of plant life, and tweaked the system to perfection. William fell asleep on the job and, as a result, the plants almost died. We also built the all important base structure.
I spent some quality time with Cliton at the Aquarium (love senior year) and I was able to trap him for long enough to record some of his vast knowledge of hydroponics. He is actually an even more interesting character than I originally thought. Although it sounds exceptionally cliche, engaging in this interview actually taught me more about him as a person than years worth of conversation. Oh yeah, it also taught me a little about my project too. But seriously, it was rewarding to be able to hold my own in a lengthy discussion with someone who is so clearly a hydroponics expert. Hydroponicsnewb no longer! I must change my username, but I wouldn't want to confuse my hoards of dedicated blog followers.
The little lucious lettuces are growing wonderfully. I attached some pictures for you to see. It's fun looking back at the older photos and seeing how different they look just a few weeks later. It would've been cool to take a snapshot every day and then flashed them in sequence like a flipbook. Unfortunately my camera was needed for other little to-do's - like prom. Although the plants have been steadily growing, it has taken forever. When I grow veggies outside it never seems to take this long for them to be ready to harvest. Perhaps I am giving them too few nutrients, or perhaps I am watching and waiting for pot to boil but it never will until I look away.
I should give lots of credit to my mother who has before now managed to go unmentioned. When I am at school, she and William plug the system in to the electric socket so the plants can get a few minutes worth of hydration. She is the best hydration station. I really need to find a timer but, once again, I want to keep the whole system zero cost. I also worry that if the system is on a timer in another room, I will not check up on it as often and I will lose that close bond that I currently share with my little lettuces. Heaven knows what we are going to go through psychologically when it comes time for harvest day.
The flow rate is now perfect and comes in predictable bursts thanks to William and my most recent addition. Back when I first looked at other people's windowfarms, I was perplexed by how they kept them from tipping over. After reading more, I realized that they had nailed them into adjacent walls and super glued them to curtains and other ridiculous feats. This made little sense to me. I experimented with dowels of different rigidities and even contemplated a custom base inside the bottom reservoir to keep things from swaying side to side. None of this worked and the system still tipped precariously. To make matters worse, my pumps (awkward miscalculation there) combined strength barely gets the water to the top bottle when the system is perpendicular to the ground. When it tilts, the water pressure changes again and the water has further to travel or something physics-y like that and so the blob of sustainance falls back down the tube and the plants shrivel and die. So it is paramount that my system stands up straight! Just when I was running out of ideas, my dad suggested that I build around the system rather than try to intrinsicly improve it. This proved to be invalable advice. Having stared at the bottles for so long, I could not see the answer to the problem which his fresh eyes immediately detected. So thanks dad! On another note, it makes me excited to go to an outstanding university where I will be surrounded my lots of keen, fresh eyes belonging to peers who will hopefully make collaboration mutally beneficial. But I digress. So William and I got busy building a base structure with a strong and competely rigid brace. We found wood in the garage, nails on the floor, and the piece of metal in the basement. (I realize that makes my house sound like a dump, which I assure you mum and dad, it is not.) Then we laced the system in to its new home and lo and behold it stood up straight with absolutely no tipping involved! Success!
I have now completed the physical portion of the Senior Project! On to the (boring) write up

testing, testing... Interview!

Classic interview with the chillest Mr. Clinton - he actually really knows his stuff. Shout out huge thank you to Mr. Clinton if he ever finds the time to read this

Sophie: So let’s get this thing started! When did you first become acquainted with the joys of hydroponic gardening?

Clinton: A long way back! Let’s figure this out. It would be back when I first started teaching so in 1995. Yeah, I started back in 1995 building aquaponics systems.

Sophie: So you’ve been gardening with hydroponics my whole lifetime!

Clinton: Well when you put it like that…

Sophie: So what did you start out doing? What kind of system did you use?

Clinton: Well I was working with some troubled kids at a halfway house and juvenile detention sort of center. We needed some science to do so I thought we could mess around with hydroponics a bit. You know for yourself that you can keep the price low if you know how to do it right. So we build fish tanks and grew strawberries and turtles.

Sophie: Please don’t tell me you harvested the turtles.

Clinton: Nah! The turtles were just for fun. Actually it all started out with the turtles because I had them as pets at the time.

Sophie: So you essentially used the turtle feces as fertilizer for your plants?

Clinton: Yep! We grew our strawberries on turtle poop!

Sophie: So where did you go from there?

Clinton: Well actually I then applied for and got a grant two years later from Toshiba. They gave us a nice stipend of money so we could develop this aquaponics system large scale. We grew tilapia in 1200 gallon tanks.

Sophie: 1200!? That’s huge!

Clinton: Yeah! We upscaled a little bit to say the least.

Sophie: Woah, was this all at the school?

Clinton: Yep, there was a lot of space but not a lot of money. So yeah we grew tilapia or perch depending on the year and then harvested them and cooked them up for the halfway house. They needed cheap protein because they didn’t have any year round.

Sophie: That’s amazing. What plants did you grow?

Clinton: Cukes, tomatoes, some lettuce. It was really great because it was all locally sources and totally fresh. We did that for about 6 years and then I left and moved to Lynn.

Sophie: What happened to the program? I’m struggling with keeping the programs sustainable when I leave next year.

Clinton: Yeah that’ll be a huge problem when you leave…. Tangent…

Clinton: Now they raise salmon.

Sophie: No way! That’s really difficult to do!

Clinton: Yeah, but not so hard when you’ve got a huge tank. They actually raise them from eggs.

Sophie: These are big shoes to fill. Did you stick with hydroponics after moving?

Clinton: Of course! I was hooked and you’ll find out that hydropnics is kind of a life addiction.

Sophie: Ruh roh. My roommate had better look out next year. Ill be growing salmon and lettuce under my bed!

Clinton: Salmon and lettuce is pretty tame compared to what most people grow with hydroponics systems!

Sophie: True! Most of the websites I tried visiting were blocked.

Clinton: I am definitely on the federal watch list due to all of the sketchy hydroponics pieces I’ve bought online. The cops are going to break into my house one day looking for stashes of weed and just find lettuce. But I mean to say I’m not opposed to pot heads furthering the science of hydroponics!

Sophie: I had to write a like disclaimer on my blog that I am not growing a weed farm for my senior project. Although I’d probably be the most popular kid in Acton right now. I’d also probably not graduate. Let’s stick to lettuce.

Clinton: So after the cukes in Marblehead… Right now I am growing basil and thyme and other herbs under the staircase.

Sophie: And everyone appreciates them on their cafeteria lunches!

Clinton: That’s right! It’s great because the lunch ladies just pop down to the staircase to pick some fresh basil during the winter when basil is ridiculously expensive. They use it in soups and salads and most importantly on the pizzas. We make the pizza at the school so it’s nice to keep the ingredients super local like that.

Sophie: You use goldfish, correct?

Clinton: Right! Yeah you’ve seen the tank of goldfish, they provide all the nutrients for the system.

Sophie: I’m not sure what nutrients to use for my little lettuces. Any ideas?

Clinton: Remember this – less is more. Less is more; you want less nutrients in your hydroponics system. Let me repeat – not too many nutrients. Don’t over do it, that is the most common downfall with people’s systems.

Sophie: Good! Because I only just started giving them any.

Clinton: Then you did well without even knowing it! Yeah don’t over do it. Things just get smelly as the plants don’t uptake the excess nutrients and bacteria take over. You don’t want to have to deal with that. Also you can kill off the plants with too much macronutrient floating around in there. Especially nitrogen. Things get really nasty then. But on the other hand, you need some nutrients. Less is more but that leads to slower growth but it’s a constant growth, you see. With plants like basil that’s especially important because they live for such a long time. With lettuce it’s a little bit different because they sprout prolifically and then die off. What kind of lettuces are you growing?

Sophie: Some fancy artisan lettuce.

Clinton: Those will need a little bit more than another type of lettuce like iceberg and head lettuces. But then the artisan lettuce holds a lot more nutrient in it so it’s better for you. I’d look up the specifics that you need for your type of plant.

Sophie: Great, will do. I wanted to say thanks again for letting me use those clay pellets. I couldn’t have done it without them. I have pretty much the whole bucket to give back to you since my system is really tiny. What was the name of that mineral that you gave to me? They chicken eggs came packaged in it.

Clinton: That’s vermiculite and perlite.

Sophie: I don’t want to waste it so can I just mix it into the soil outside?

Clinton: Yeah its great mixed with compost!

Sophie: Cool I’ll use it when I garden this weekend. So, can you think of any local hydroponics farms? I tried when trying to figure out this interview but nothing really seemed local.

Clinton: Hmmmm. Nope. That’s weird actually. Yeah I can’t think of any.

Sophie: Does most of the stuff that you order in from online come from far away.

Clinton: Yeah, I think most of it is from Cali.

Sophie: What role do you envision hydroponics playing in the future?

Clinton: Oh it’s going to grow! More people will grow with hydroponics in the future. Grow pot. Just kidding!... Tangent…

Sophie: The only downfall I see with my system is the contradiction of having to plug my “garden” into the wall socket.

Clinton: I agree. The energy piece is counterintuitive. However, the system at school taps right into the solar panel so at least I know its entirely green energy. A nice closed circuit.

Sophie: I calculated how much energy my system uses annually and it amounts to like 90 cents worth of electricity.

Clinton: Right, well it depends on which type of system you use. For example, I use flood and drain which uses significantly less energy than running a pump all the time. That’s actually why I chose flood and drain over nutrient film. With film you’ve got to have the pump running 24/7 and besides the energy draw, with power outages the plants die because they are so used to having a constant stream of water supplied to their roots all the time.

Sophie: Mine is a sort of flood and drain. I have a pump on a timer which shoots water to the top of the system and then it percolates through the three bottles and back to the reservoir. I am grappling with how long to have the pump running.

Clinton: Well remember that that time will change as the plants get bigger.

Sophie: Good call! That is a really good point!

Clinton: Another great thing about hydroponics which we should probably mention is how easily hydroponics brings gardens into cities and urban environments. 100 years ago there were 78 cities with a million or more inhabitants. Today there are 450 cities with greater than a million people in them. These are essentially food deserts. We need to find a way to grow food sustainably in the cities.

Sophie: And vertically.

Clinton: Exactly, we are facing space restrictions, super hot temperatures, and minimal outside access. So it looks like hydroponics will help people grow food vertically and inside while converting dirty air into clean air and sequestering carbon all while solving the food crisis! Then we won’t have to sustain the tiny city with huge amounts of outside farm land.

Sophie: And as fuel prices go up, the transportation cost won’t be a factor!

Clinton: Exactly! See hydroponics will save the world.

PICS!

window farms link

It's been a week full of growing. William has verbalized to me many times how close he feels emotionally with the lettuces. I don't know how we're ever going to eat them.
In case you were wondering what this site is that I keep refering to - here is the link
http://www.windowfarms.org/
Most other hydroponics forums that I checked out were discussing how to maximize their yeild of a crop that my teacher would not be happy I was harvesting... rhymes with 'marine iguana'

Journal 2

This week, William and I really got down to work. We took an important step in documenting our progress through this very blog! The world can now watch as we develop our green thumbs (do dogs even have thumbs?)
William and I agreed that pictures were the best way to capture people's attention. We located a nice camera, learned how to use it, and documented ourselves in action. We tried to take pictures of both the physical objects and how they are used together. We hope that people will learn from our trials and errors so the pictures are not posed. We learned that we need to have the camera on hand at all times so that the photo story is not choppy with days of growth and development in between. Next William and I struggled with cords and memory chips to upload the pictures. This proved to be a challenge. But we persevered and our hours of work paid off. Then we pondered the many methods of sharing things digitally and decided on this blogger website. We discounted Facebook due to its many distractions, informal presentation, inaccessibility at school, and poor photo resolution. Uploading directly to the WindowFarms website was also disregarded as an option since the website has limited blogging capabilities. Once the blog is finished in its entirety, we will attach a link to the WindowsFarms website and create a smaller version of this blog on that site too. WindowFarms is an essential method of documentation because it allows us to connect directly with a population already absorbed in hydroponics gardening. William and I posted a few photos of our work thus far and dabbled with a little blogging. Creating the site itself was simple but since we are such perfectionists, we had to customize the page which got complicated quickly. We spent about three hours tweaking the blog bu the good news is that we are now professional bloggers. William is still having trouble with the concept of the mouse.
The seedlings are growing nicely. William has been watching them dutifully all day while Sophie goes to school and although he bugs her continuously when she returns home, she has been too absorbed in Green Flag shenanigans to pay attention to the gravity of what he is saying. While Sophie was out videotaping people for a PowerDown documentary and digging up plants for the rain garden, William noticed that the leaves were getting progressively yellower. He associated this color deprivation with a lack of nutrients. When he had some free time, he searched the house for anything he could use for plant nutrition. He considered mulch, compost, grow blocks, etc. but nothing seemed quite right. Then he happened upon a gold mine. In the garage he found a longforgotten bottle of Miracle Grow. It was a true miracle. William then asked Sophie to unscrew the cap and together they added 10 drops to the water. He will continue watching tonight and tomorrow to see if the plants regain their color.
In the meantime, Sophie really needs to get her act together searching for a good interview. Mr. Clinton would be excellent but since she already knows him personally, it would be nice to branch out a little.
Next step is completing the blog entries from the past week. Then Soph will find someone to interview. Then the dynamic duo can get down to the fun work of actually building the rest of the system. You can see from the pictures that we have the hollow outline but the lifeline (pun because theyre tubes) can get connected in and start pumping. They have a long way to go this vacation.
In an ideal world, we will expand upon the three bottle system and build a huge 12 bottle hanging device. In order to do this, William and I will need to invest approximately 12 hours in building time. We need to locate our structure and most importantly our pump!
Talking about pumps, I am getting a little worried about the physics side of things. Although I have not electrocuted myself as of yet, we also have not deduced how to get the water streaming up to the top of the 4 foot system... let alone the 6 foot triple split one! I also do not know if William will be able to find a strong enough pump for free. We really do not want to break our stingey record.