Basil Instinct

WE’VE ALL HAD a few moments when we’ve looked at our food and wondered, “Where did this come from?”

That question is almost always a tough one to answer. But if you’re eating in or around Westerville, there’s always a chance some of the meal came from right here at home – and if it did, its origin may just have been Westerville North High School.

Jeff Bracken’s primary job is as a Westerville North High School chemistry teacher. But when he’s not teaching, he’s working with students of all disciplines on the school’s hydroponics program. In hydroponic gardening, plants are grown using water and mineral nutrient solutions, but no soil.

Today, the program is responsible for supplying many local businesses with produce and herbs, and provides a valuable, hands-on type of education for participating students.

“Back in 2007, I was searching online for hydroponics information and went to Indoor Gardens to buy a water pump to make a basic experiment for class,” Bracken says. “I saw so many amazing things growing in the store, I just had to take a look at the chemistry behind hydroponics.”

A lot of work goes into setting up a proper hydroponic garden. North has very few windows, making it difficult for the plants to get sufficient lighting, and that was the first problem Bracken hoped to solve.

Bracken then spoke to Rick Tirburzio, the high school’s police/resource officer, who told him about illegal drug hydroponic systems that are confiscated in drug busts.

“They’re usually destroyed, but the officer and I managed to work out an arrangement where a lot of the equipment is donated to North,” Bracken says.

Along with four high-pressure sodium (HPS) grow lights donated by the Westerville Division of Police in 2007, the program received a $1,000 grant from the Westerville Education Foundation.

“That grant was critical to starting our program with significant financial support,” Bracken says.

Since then, the program has expanded, and has gathered more than $7,000 worth of equipment, including 15 400watt HPS grow lights, various ha-

High school hydroponics program supplies food and educates students

lide grow lights and an expansive Aeroflo 60 system that houses 60 different plant sites, which the students hope to use to grow strawberries.

A few years ago, the autism unit at the school planted lettuce as part of a school project. The special education teachers at North used the practice as a way of helping students become interested in what they were learning about through handson experience.

The lettuce project worked, and after years of fine-tuning, students are able to harvest 49 heads of Bibb lettuce every week. The students have about 245 heads growing in different stages.

The vegetables were first used in the school cafeteria, but when there was too much produce, it often went to waste. For a while, extra lettuce went to staff members who were happy to take fresh lettuce with legitimate, sealed packaging. Using different environments – such as raised plant beds and PVC hoop houses – that created a budget greenhouse, students also tried to grow cabbages, carrots and radishes.

“The neat part is that you can control all the variables,” Bracken says. “The chemicals, the nutrients, 16 hours of artificial sunlight, the temperature … you can turn it all into a clockwork of the growing process.”

As he and his colleagues worked to chart and determine the growing process, the students in the program began to grow another product: basil.

The basil was an immediate hit with local businesses. Restaurants such as Wendell’s Pub and Marcella’s Ristorante began to buy bulk basil from the school on a weekly basis. Last October, the program had 840 basil plants, making $120 per week for the school.

How does the hydroponics program keep up with the demands of local businesses? There is a system in place for recycling plant material, which eliminates the need to buy more seeds or growing materials.

“Marcella’s needs two pounds of basil leaves for an order, for example,” Bracken says. “The stem from the basil plant is put in an aeroponic cloner that will enable the basil stem to grow roots and thus produce more leaves.”

No basil seeds have been bought for more than a year now – there’s no need.

As the equipment and number of peo- ple involved in the hydroponics program grew, the basil rafts and different hydroponics began to spread out to locations around the high school, such as the principal’s office and the library.

The hydroponics program is mostly faculty-run, with lots of students doing harvesting work, but there is no student leadership as of yet.

“In class, students would create sugar solutions, other tasks, and solutions would just get thrown away. Jessica Waites developed an experience where the kids develop calcium nitrate or potassium nitrate solutions, and then the solutions (can) be used in the hydroponic systems,” Bracken says. “The hope is that every chemistry student will feel a connection to the project and the community.”

With the program’s ever-expanding produce options, which now include hot peppers and pineapples, the students of North continue to flock to the sustainable and fun experience of hydroponic growing.

“Once we’ve figured out more variables about how to hang lights and so on, we want to share more with other schools,” Bracken says. “The goal is to put all the information into a manual that other teachers all around the U.S. could use to develop their own hydroponics systems, probably with basil as the base.”

Tyler Davis is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@pubgroupltd.com.