TRAVERSE CITY -- Students, staff, and parent volenteers at Grand Traverse Academy have constructed a 33-foot geodesic dome greenhouse located just outside the school's science classrooms.
The idea was put forth by GTA science teacher, Matt Drost, and funded by the academy and grants from GTSI with the Conservation District and Trout Unlimited.
After the student's expressed interest, Drost created an elective course in aquaponics- a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture. The students built a small-scale system in the classroom, and are excited to have moved it and expanded into the greenhouse-and get wait to build it bigger.
Waste water from a fish tank feeds plants grown on a gravel bed. The plants then aerate and clean the water before it flows back into the fish tank. The school also uses nutrient-rich compost water (broken down by worms-in turn helping the fish) for the plants. In this system, no fertilizers or chemicals are needed for plant production. And, it uses 95% less water than growing plants in soil and allows for ten times the number of plants to grow in the same amount of space.
Other courses at GTA, such as physics, have also been able to utilize the greenhouse set-up and fishtanks for studies.
Drost stated, "The whole hands-on project that they can see at the end, they have this result- whether it's lettuce or a whole new structure they built and can grow things in. It's taking things and really trying to figure them out-not just because they're being told to figure it out but because they actually want to figure it out. It provides opportunites as a teacher you'd never be able to provide, it just happens."
The students are growing peas, beans, and lettuce and just had their first harvest! Around the edges of the greenhouse there are traditional raised-bed soil gardens planted to give younger students a chance for hands-on planting projects. In the future, the students hope to start up a salad bar at the school and/or a student-run Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for the GT community.
