thank you I work at George Mason
University I’m here to tell you about
sustainable ways to grow food and buy
sustainable I want to make it clear
means for the planet to benefit the
planet also the benefit future
generations but also literally to
sustain the effort that you’re gonna put
into this so why George Mason well I
went there as a student and I had no
idea what I wanted to study and I
decided to check out the greenhouse and
the gardens because I thought that
sounded cool at the time and I
immediately just fell in love I
absolutely just threw myself into the
field I learned everything I could learn
about plants and gardening and I
immediately started teaching others and
started leading and I realized I was a
natural leader so they hired me as a
student intern to run the gardens and
when I graduated they ended up hiring me
to run the greenhouse I discovered that
growing food was my absolute passion and
my calling
particularly teaching others about
growing food I realized that is my life
goal I really really enjoy it so when I
graduated they hired me to fix up this
greenhouse it was empty
and they decided to grow food in there
in an attempt to have that food served
on campus in the dining halls so to do
that we had to use hydroponics and the
reason is because it’s super clean in
soil you still have a risk of foodborne
illness especially when it’s a public
garden it’s not secured in the
greenhouse it’s locked and in
hydroponics there’s no soil and that’s
the definition so you can see here we
have these PVC plastic channels with the
tubes that flow the water through the
plants and this is our romaine lettuce
here my chefs absolutely love it and the
roots you can see directly because
there’s no soil it’s growing directly in
the water and we add nutrients to the
water and the plants grow on average
three to five times faster than in soil
plants another benefit is that there’s
no weeding there’s no digging
there’s no shoveling there’s no need to
really get dirty it’s super clean super
simple and I mean how many of you have
ever done any gardening before how many
hours have you spent weeding in the
summer I mean several hours a week and
on an industrial farm what do they do
they’re not hand weeding they spray it
with herbicide chemicals to get rid of
these weeds so with hydroponics no weeds
that saves us a lot of time and this is
our Swiss chard growing it’s absolutely
gorgeous and you can see that PVC
channel there no weeds just just the
plants we want also you can harvest very
easily you can see it the channels are
at waist height we just pull them out
and we can start harvesting them right
there
so there’s no bending down to weed
there’s no bending down every time you
want to look at your plant it’s just
right there and we harvest every Tuesday
a great benefit is that it’s automatic
so I can leave over the weekend
I don’t have to water my plants there is
how it works basically there’s a
reservoir tank or a stock tank with a
pump this machine monitors the
fertilizer as well as the pH and there’s
a pump that pumps the water through when
the when the water drains it goes back
to that tank and it recirculates so it
uses 10 percent of the water that would
be required outside so you’re saving a
lot of water here also you can grow a
lot more food in less space it’s a lot
easier to stack your produce and with
our rising populations and the limited
amount of land we have especially good
soil lands hydroponics is truly a really
good solution for food security you can
see here that there are four shelves in
our microgreen rack the microgreens only
take two to three weeks to grow they’re
very fast so some of the waste that we
produce in the greenhouse like the dead
leaves and roots when we’re done with
them actually get composted in our worm
compost and I always love to share this
because you can compost indoors you do
not need a yard to compost
and the way you do it you have these
specific regular worms and we have these
worm bins you can buy both of these on
Amazon really cheap like 20 60 bucks max
and basically the worms break the the
material down for you
and within three to six months it turns
into beautiful soil and you can put your
plants directly in that soil that you
created for free the average person
creates 1,600 pounds of trash every year
that’s just one person’s trash so a lot
of that weight is coming out of the
scraps in your kitchen
and every day you have these scraps that
go into the waste system and usually
you’re actually paying people to take it
away for you we’re really that’s a very
valuable resource and if you can do it
indoors with worms it’s super easy you
could have it under your sink and that
decomposition process is happening right
there and we have them in the greenhouse
to divert some of our waste now the soil
I can’t use in the hydroponics but it
goes into our Gardens and so are the
other Gardens that I manage on campus
one of which is the innovation food
forest and it is right in the middle of
campus students can walk through we also
lead volunteers there and it is designed
using permaculture which is a term
coined in 1980 by Bill Mollison and is
the words permanent and agriculture
combined in one and basically it’s the
concept of using perennial plants which
means they’re permanent like an apple
tree you plant it once and it grows back
for you every year it goes dormant over
the winter and then the spring it comes
back up it grows fruit for you without
you really having to do anything so this
is the key concept of permaculture there
are a lot of other techniques and you
can learn about them there’s a
permaculture design certification course
that I’ve done that are happening all
over the globe and it’s really rising in
popularity
it’s site-specific it has to do with the
specific land that you may have and what
plants will do well there is
particularly the micro climates what
areas are more wet which areas have more
shade or Sun and placing the right
plants there it also has to do with
placing the plants that will work well
together some of you may have heard of
pan Yin planting have you heard of the
three sisters the corn beans and squash
your squash cover the ground and keep it
moist your corn grows really tall and
your beans actually climb the corn
individually growing them you may be
wasting space you’re gonna have to
create a trellis for your beans to climb
with the three sisters you’re utilizing
all your space and they’re working
together so that’s the concept of a
guilt and comfrey
is this really great plant that’s really
common in guilds because it’s basically
a self fertilizer it has very deep roots
that pull the nutrients from deep
underground stores it in its leaves and
then when the leaves decay in the fall
it’s bringing those nutrients to the
soil so it’s mulching for you and it’s
fertilizing for you
so the persimmon tree in the back there
will have comfrey near and all all of
our fruit trees do have comfrey and that
allows us to not have to fertilize and
not have to mulch as much so the key is
to to grow food with with minimal labor
and truly growing your own food will
make you happier and healthier the
sights the smells the health benefits of
it it makes me extremely happy and it’s
it’s beautiful and you can get a
hydroponic system I made a little mini
one $60 and you can have it on your
counter in your kitchen you can grow
food and and harvest it right there in
your kitchen if you have a little bit of
a yard you can also use permaculture so
I highly recommend that you come to
George Mason campus because you can take
some come free to go to your garden you
could take some worms and bring them I
can show you how to do all of this
hands-on for free you can get training
to do all these techniques at George
Mason campus by volunteering getting
involved and that way you can actually
do it and you’ll be you’ll be learning
by actually experiencing it in real life
thank you
you
University I’m here to tell you about
sustainable ways to grow food and buy
sustainable I want to make it clear
means for the planet to benefit the
planet also the benefit future
generations but also literally to
sustain the effort that you’re gonna put
into this so why George Mason well I
went there as a student and I had no
idea what I wanted to study and I
decided to check out the greenhouse and
the gardens because I thought that
sounded cool at the time and I
immediately just fell in love I
absolutely just threw myself into the
field I learned everything I could learn
about plants and gardening and I
immediately started teaching others and
started leading and I realized I was a
natural leader so they hired me as a
student intern to run the gardens and
when I graduated they ended up hiring me
to run the greenhouse I discovered that
growing food was my absolute passion and
my calling
particularly teaching others about
growing food I realized that is my life
goal I really really enjoy it so when I
graduated they hired me to fix up this
greenhouse it was empty
and they decided to grow food in there
in an attempt to have that food served
on campus in the dining halls so to do
that we had to use hydroponics and the
reason is because it’s super clean in
soil you still have a risk of foodborne
illness especially when it’s a public
garden it’s not secured in the
greenhouse it’s locked and in
hydroponics there’s no soil and that’s
the definition so you can see here we
have these PVC plastic channels with the
tubes that flow the water through the
plants and this is our romaine lettuce
here my chefs absolutely love it and the
roots you can see directly because
there’s no soil it’s growing directly in
the water and we add nutrients to the
water and the plants grow on average
three to five times faster than in soil
plants another benefit is that there’s
no weeding there’s no digging
there’s no shoveling there’s no need to
really get dirty it’s super clean super
simple and I mean how many of you have
ever done any gardening before how many
hours have you spent weeding in the
summer I mean several hours a week and
on an industrial farm what do they do
they’re not hand weeding they spray it
with herbicide chemicals to get rid of
these weeds so with hydroponics no weeds
that saves us a lot of time and this is
our Swiss chard growing it’s absolutely
gorgeous and you can see that PVC
channel there no weeds just just the
plants we want also you can harvest very
easily you can see it the channels are
at waist height we just pull them out
and we can start harvesting them right
there
so there’s no bending down to weed
there’s no bending down every time you
want to look at your plant it’s just
right there and we harvest every Tuesday
a great benefit is that it’s automatic
so I can leave over the weekend
I don’t have to water my plants there is
how it works basically there’s a
reservoir tank or a stock tank with a
pump this machine monitors the
fertilizer as well as the pH and there’s
a pump that pumps the water through when
the when the water drains it goes back
to that tank and it recirculates so it
uses 10 percent of the water that would
be required outside so you’re saving a
lot of water here also you can grow a
lot more food in less space it’s a lot
easier to stack your produce and with
our rising populations and the limited
amount of land we have especially good
soil lands hydroponics is truly a really
good solution for food security you can
see here that there are four shelves in
our microgreen rack the microgreens only
take two to three weeks to grow they’re
very fast so some of the waste that we
produce in the greenhouse like the dead
leaves and roots when we’re done with
them actually get composted in our worm
compost and I always love to share this
because you can compost indoors you do
not need a yard to compost
and the way you do it you have these
specific regular worms and we have these
worm bins you can buy both of these on
Amazon really cheap like 20 60 bucks max
and basically the worms break the the
material down for you
and within three to six months it turns
into beautiful soil and you can put your
plants directly in that soil that you
created for free the average person
creates 1,600 pounds of trash every year
that’s just one person’s trash so a lot
of that weight is coming out of the
scraps in your kitchen
and every day you have these scraps that
go into the waste system and usually
you’re actually paying people to take it
away for you we’re really that’s a very
valuable resource and if you can do it
indoors with worms it’s super easy you
could have it under your sink and that
decomposition process is happening right
there and we have them in the greenhouse
to divert some of our waste now the soil
I can’t use in the hydroponics but it
goes into our Gardens and so are the
other Gardens that I manage on campus
one of which is the innovation food
forest and it is right in the middle of
campus students can walk through we also
lead volunteers there and it is designed
using permaculture which is a term
coined in 1980 by Bill Mollison and is
the words permanent and agriculture
combined in one and basically it’s the
concept of using perennial plants which
means they’re permanent like an apple
tree you plant it once and it grows back
for you every year it goes dormant over
the winter and then the spring it comes
back up it grows fruit for you without
you really having to do anything so this
is the key concept of permaculture there
are a lot of other techniques and you
can learn about them there’s a
permaculture design certification course
that I’ve done that are happening all
over the globe and it’s really rising in
popularity
it’s site-specific it has to do with the
specific land that you may have and what
plants will do well there is
particularly the micro climates what
areas are more wet which areas have more
shade or Sun and placing the right
plants there it also has to do with
placing the plants that will work well
together some of you may have heard of
pan Yin planting have you heard of the
three sisters the corn beans and squash
your squash cover the ground and keep it
moist your corn grows really tall and
your beans actually climb the corn
individually growing them you may be
wasting space you’re gonna have to
create a trellis for your beans to climb
with the three sisters you’re utilizing
all your space and they’re working
together so that’s the concept of a
guilt and comfrey
is this really great plant that’s really
common in guilds because it’s basically
a self fertilizer it has very deep roots
that pull the nutrients from deep
underground stores it in its leaves and
then when the leaves decay in the fall
it’s bringing those nutrients to the
soil so it’s mulching for you and it’s
fertilizing for you
so the persimmon tree in the back there
will have comfrey near and all all of
our fruit trees do have comfrey and that
allows us to not have to fertilize and
not have to mulch as much so the key is
to to grow food with with minimal labor
and truly growing your own food will
make you happier and healthier the
sights the smells the health benefits of
it it makes me extremely happy and it’s
it’s beautiful and you can get a
hydroponic system I made a little mini
one $60 and you can have it on your
counter in your kitchen you can grow
food and and harvest it right there in
your kitchen if you have a little bit of
a yard you can also use permaculture so
I highly recommend that you come to
George Mason campus because you can take
some come free to go to your garden you
could take some worms and bring them I
can show you how to do all of this
hands-on for free you can get training
to do all these techniques at George
Mason campus by volunteering getting
involved and that way you can actually
do it and you’ll be you’ll be learning
by actually experiencing it in real life
thank you
you
Please follow and like us: