Growing Their Own At Corner Cafe
Growing Their Own At Corner Cafe
Cooking students soon will have fresh herbs to harvest
Natovia Talbot, a junior at Princeton Township, IL, High School, places bok choy seedlings into the new tower garden at the Corner Cafe in the Area Career Center’s Dolan Building next to the La Salle-Peru Township High School. The 5-foot tower circulates water and nutrients under artificial light to grow lettuce and herbs, which culinary arts students will harvest and use. Tracey MacLeod
- Jeff Dankert | February 6, 2018
Indoor growing technology is putting fresh herbs into the hands of culinary arts students.
A 5-foot tower garden is starting to green up in the dining area of the Corner Cafe, which is in the Area Career Center’s Dolan Building on the La Salle-Peru Township High School campus.
A few students took a break from the kitchen a few days ago to transplant lettuce, onion, chard, arugula, bok choy and basil into the tower. The plants were started in trays where each plant was labeled with a plastic spoon.
The tower herbage should be ready in a few weeks, said Susan Stiker, culinary arts instructor.
The students use many greens and herbs in the kitchen.
“Actually quite a bit. Kale, basil for pesto,” said Abby Nord, a junior at Princeton Township High School. The Area Career Center teaches students from several area high schools.
“Aren’t we going to try Chinese and use the bok choy with it?” said Natovia Talbot, also a junior at Princeton High.
The new gadget and the growing plants get frequent checks by the students.
“Every day when they come in, they check this first,” Stiker said.
The growing tower looks like high-tech hydroponics but the maker calls it aero-ponics because the plants are not sitting in the water.
Seeds are started in a synthetic medium called rockwool inside grow trays. The clumps of rockwool, bearing tiny seedlings, are transplanted into slotted pods on the outside of the tower cylinder. A rack surrounding the tower glows with three florescent light tubes, oriented vertically, to provide energy for photosynthesis. The lights are on for 14 hours and off for 10, Stiker said.
At the bottom of the tower cylinder is a 20-gallon water reservoir that holds dissolved fertilizers and nutrients. A pump circulates water up and drips it down along the inside, watering and feeding the clumps of rockwool and plant roots growing within. The watering is set on a timer.
“It cycles on for 15 minutes and is off for 45 minutes,” Stiker said.
Deborah Aldana checks the progress of celery, avocado and potato roots growing inside jars of water. These plants won’t go into the tower garden but are a demonstration of how vegetable roots can be used to grow new plants.
This project integrates with the educational buzzword, STEM — science, technology, engineering, and math. Preparing and cooking food has many STEM opportunities, Stiker said.
“I’m doing all of that STEM stuff all the time. That’s what this is,” she said, pointing to the tower. “Students looking to do an independent study, this would be a great thing. I had the kids research how to harvest and how to check the pH.”
The $900 apparatus came with all the equipment and supplies to get started. It was funded by a grant from the La Salle-Peru Township High School Foundation for Educational Enrichment.
The Corner Cafe is a restaurant with a fully-equipped kitchen and dining area for the public. Students prepare food to sell and for events. Students recently made pies for a buffet, prepared food for a group of eighth graders, made chili for a fundraiser and prepared Super Bowl snacks for staff.
Indoor garden towers are a thing among urbanites. The vertical design uses less space, such as a corner of the dining area inside the Corner Cafe.
“I knew I had to do something smaller here,” Stiker said.
Stiker got the idea from a middle school in Texas that was growing plants in an indoor tower. School gardens, indoors and outdoors, have taken off, she said.
“There are schools that actually supply their cafeteria,” Stiker said.
Streator Township High School students constructed six indoor plant towers that are now growing lettuce, said agricultural educator, Riley Hintzsche.
Streator students have a vegetable garden two blocks away and grow sweet corn on one-fourth of an acre outside of town. Students harvest the vegetables and donate them to the food pantry, he said.
“We do have some of the food classes use the produce occasionally as they need them,” Hintzsche said.
Jeff Dankert can be reached at (815) 220-6977 or lasallereporter@newstrib.com. Follow him on Twitter @NT_LaSalle.