Gardening is Life: Engaging Learners into Hydroponics and Vegetable Gardening

One of the delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides.-W E Johns

Hello fellow Hive gardeners!🤗I hope you're having a productive and beautiful day! My first time to participate in this wonderful community but I'm more than glad to have finally made this initiative!

Never did it occur to me when I was younger or even when I graduated college that I would love and be into gardening myself until I became a public school teacher. And on this occasion, I'm very excited to share with you in this blog how we integrate the skill of growing vegetables in our school garden.

Hydroponics Gardening in School

Hydroponics Gardening in school is the initiative of our School Head, Sir Edsel. He has this small business at his home and extends his expertise and skill in this kind of gardening in school through teaching our students how to grow Lettuce and Cucumber through hydroponics gardening.

The school actually offers Horticulture as its Technical Vocational Livelihood (TVL) course with our Senior High School students exposed to different gardening skills and the Hydroponics Gardening in school is just one way of applying the students' learning of the Horticulture course.

By the way, what is Hydroponics?

Hydroponics is a type of horticulture and a subset of hydroculture which involves growing plants, usually crops or medicinal plants, without soil, by using water-based mineral nutrient solutions. Terrestrial or aquatic plants may grow with their roots exposed to the nutritious liquid or in addition, the roots may be mechanically supported by an inert medium such as perlite, gravel, or other substrates. Source: Wikipedia

The plants receive the necessary nutrients from the hydroponic fertilizer added to the water.

Growing Lettuce through Hydroponics Gardening: The Preparation

1. Choose Quality Seeds. A healthy and productive plant starts from a good quality seed and preparing the Lettuce seeds to use should be carefully chosen.

Sir Edsel suggested to use coated lettuce seeds and mentioned he managed to purchase these seeds at 1,800.00 from his trusted supplier.

_{The seedlings after 17 days from sowing.}

2. Prepare the area and the materials. While the seeds are growing into healthy seedlings, make ready the ff. materials to be used such as PVC pipes, insulation foams, styrofoam cups, coco peat, plastic pail, and the working solution. The area should be in a place where this leafy vegetable will be exposed to sunlight to achieve the perfect green color of the leaves.

3. Transfer Seedlings to Receptacles. For about 17 days from the day they are sown, the lettuce seedlings shall then be ready to be transferred to their receptacles and for this purpose, the school used styrofoam cups.

4. Place Coco Peat in the Styrofoam Cups. In order to stabilize the lettuce roots, use coco Peat to place in the styrofoam cups with drainage holes at the bottom.

5. Devise the DIY Hydroponic System. Using a Megabox/Plastic Pail as the Reservoir, the water system shall have the A & B working solution with the three primary ingredients for the plants to grow well such as nitrogen(N), phosphorus(P), and potassium(K).

6. Install the 24-hour electrically-operated water system.

_{Two Weeks from Seedling Transfer}

7. Ready to Harvest. After 45 days, the fully grown lettuce shall now be ready for harvest.

Disclaimer: These tips and information are shared by Sir Edsel as I asked him how to grow plants through Hydroponics Gardening. If there are things I missed or failed to mention, you may leave your comment below.

Vegetable Gardening in School

Vegetable gardening in school is a response to the initiative of the Cebu Provincial Government in partnership with the Municipal Agriculture Office (MAO). This is in connection to the program SUGBUsog sa Eskuylahan implemented by the schools in Cebu province. SUGBUsog in local dialect stands for Sugbuanong Busog, Luwas ug Himsog* *(which means Cebuanos who are full are safe and healthy and Eskuylahan means School.

A perfect learning experience of students to practice responsibility in growing and taking care of plants, the students from the different grade levels and sections were assigned to an area to grow vegetables and maintain a productive garden.

This little school park divided into 12 plant boxes are planted with vegetables assigned to the 12 sections of students from Junior and Senior High School.

The Preparation

It was last March, 2023 that we started planting the reared seedlings from the School Nursery to our assigned area. These seedlings included okra or lady finger, talong or eggplant, sili or sword pepper, kamatis or tomato, upo or bottle gourd, ampalaya or bitter gourd. The seeds were provided by the Municipal Agriculture Office (MAO).

Caring the Plants

Facilitated by classroom advisers as well as non-advisers, students maintain their assigned area from weeding, cultivating the soil, filling in the bottles with tight drainage holes planted beside the roots to keep the soil of the plants moist to watering them everyday.

The Making of Organic Insect Attractants. These neon green recycled bottles hanged on the trellis for the bottle gourd and bitter gourd are insect attractants. In order to attract insects and trap them to avoid destroying the plants, organic insect attractants are important. The following are the organic insect attractants prepared by our Horticulture students guided by their teacher:

1. Molasses and Coconut Wine.* This is done by mixing molasses and coconut wine altogether.

2. Neem Plant Extract.* This is done by pulverizing the leaves of a nymph tree until the juice can be extracted from these leaves.

3. Preparation of Fish Amino Acid.* This is a mixture of molasses and fish waste. This is to increase soil fertility for the plants grow productive.

Disclaimer: This information I got from my colleague who teaches the Horticulture subject to our Grade 9-12 students.

The Fruits of Our Labor

After few weeks and without us knowing it, what we planted already started to grow flowers which eventually turned into a fruit. .

According to the famous quote, "You reap what you sow!". And, indeed for many weeks now, we, together with the students, have enjoyed the fruits of our labor. Cooking these vegetables for feeding purposes!

Not only we have saved money, we have also enjoyed the benefits of eating healthy foods from the blessings that we harvest from our garden.

Indeed, there's so much joy about a garden not only because of the anticipation it provides, but engaging our learners into hydroponics and vegetable gardening teaches them to be responsible, strategic, patient and optimistic- the qualities that they most need in order to be successful in life!

And this is all today's blog dear Hive Friends. I hope you enjoyed this post as well as learned something from it.

This post is my entry to the Creative Garden Challenge for the month of June in the #HiveGarden Community.

I am inviting @naymhapz to this challenge.

Thank you for reaching this far reading and supporting my post. See you again in my upcoming blogs. Until then.....