By establishing a garden at Micheltorena Grammar School, the community is restoring farming traditions to an honored status. Children here will grow up with its memory and so will we, the parents. This garden will serve as a daily reminder to us that the earth provides life and that life requires tending. Growing plants calms people and provides pause for reflection.
In a time when slow foods and local farming have all but disappeared from big cities, a return to the garden assures we will grow more civilized. The garden is a strong reinforcement for the bonds that form community because it reinforces the bonds that connect community to beloved Earth-- the one thing we know for sure that ALL people have in common.
The Tower, above, is an aeroponic garden, a vertical grow column without soil, where plants breathe as much as they feed on the nutrients provided. A low-draw (20 watt) electric pump, solar powered or insignificantly juiced by an AC plug, it is one of the best sources for pure foods, bar none. It will be donated today at the Micheltorena School Community Garden. It's intended as a learning opportunity, showing how anyone can have a garden, even without soil.
Aeroponic Towers discharge nothing into the environment besides pure evaporated water and vapor transpired naturally by plants. Yet, it's growth capabilities are enhanced and, up out of the soil, they are not susceptible to soil-burrowing pests. A greenhouse 24-ft. x 125-ft. can grow the equivalent of acres of food, in a pure, clean, non-toxic, easy to tend and harvest operation manned by two to four people. After a century of destructive agricultural industries doing damage to the Earth, this kind of system is the future of farming... able to put farming back where it started, in the places where people live.
This is why Aeroponic Tower farming is beneficial. Not for all foods, because root foods still need to be grown in soil. But if a majority of high-nutrition foods can be grown in Towers using just 5% of the water and organic nutrient needed by soil-farming, in a vertical, space-saving configuration, we begin to address some of the more pressing needs faced by society in the next few decades. Less water needed... No toxic chemicals needed... Harvests done standing upright... Increased yields and faster growth rates.
And growing vertically increases density of plants per square foot by 6 to 10 times. That kind of conservation frees up land-area that can be re-forested and forests help to filter carbon dioxide, smog, and global warming emissions.
This is why Aeroponic Tower farming is beneficial. Not for all foods, because root foods still need to be grown in soil. But if a majority of high-nutrition foods can be grown in Towers using just 5% of the water and organic nutrient needed by soil-farming, in a vertical, space-saving configuration, we begin to address some of the more pressing needs faced by society in the next few decades. Less water needed... No toxic chemicals needed... Harvests done standing upright... Increased yields and faster growth rates.
And growing vertically increases density of plants per square foot by 6 to 10 times. That kind of conservation frees up land-area that can be re-forested and forests help to filter carbon dioxide, smog, and global warming emissions.
It’s too late for our generation to save the planet from the waste we’ve introduced and that we've become accustomed to requiring. The planet will have to be saved by children who are in grammar school today and the children that they will, in turn, bring into the world. The only thing we, the adults today, can do is provide the tools and the direction our children must take to do the job needed for restoring Eden and assuring survival of life as we know it.
That’s what these Towers can help do and it’s in that spirit my foundation, The Waters Wheel, will continue to provide them to schools and community gardens wherever we can. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity at Micheltorena School and Community Garden.
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