“It tasted so yummy,” said Rhea Dodson. “Everything was so crispy and fresh!”

Dodson, a third grader at Desert View Intermediate, was referring to a salad she ate after harvesting lettuce and other greens she and her fellow classmates grew themselves.

Last August, Mrs. Henderson’s third grade class joined forces with TerraBirds, a non-profit organization from Flagstaff that provides schools with gardening programs, to install a hydroponic grow tower.  The first part of the project was building the tower – which included adding grow lights and liquid nutrients, then planting the seedpods. Since then, the tower has resided in Mrs. Henderson’s classroom where, day by day, the students get to watch the plants grow.

Dodson said she loved everything about the grow tower project.

“It was fun taking care of the plants and watching them get bigger and bigger,” she said. “I like the way it looks in our room. It kind of glows.”

Brooklyn Swinton also loved the in-classroom hydroponic garden.

“It’s really fun watching the plants grow,” Swinton said. “And when we ate it, I noticed it had a little bit more flavor than what we get from the store.  It would be interesting to see what would happen if the school had its own garden.”

The motivation behind the project is to help students better understand how plants grow, whether in hydroponic arrangements in urban habitats or more traditional outdoor garden spaces and greenhouses, and encourage them to be good stewards, explained Nicole Houston, school gardens program coordinator for TerraBirds.

The hands-on experience of cultivating the herbs and vegetables from seeds to food allows the students to learn about photosynthesis, nutrients, and soil pH in a real, working situation. 

“The grow tower is a jumping off point for the teacher to continue this type of education,” said Houston. “Most kids have never seen food grow. They’ve never watched lettuce grow.”

Studies show that kids who are involved in gardening projects are more likely to eat and enjoy vegetables and it opens the door for teachers to talk to their students about nutrition and healthy eating.

After nearly two months of taking care of the plants, it was finally time to harvest and eat them.

Ian Klay, director of dining for Chartwells, PUSD’s food service provider, heard about the hydroponic grow tower and wanted to be part of it when it was time to harvest the vegetables and herbs.

“What they are doing with the grow tower and growing their own food goes hand-in-hand with our Discovery Kitchen mission,” she said. “We asked if we could be a part of it.”

Mrs. Henderson was happy to invite them into their indoor gardening project.

Klay and her team didn’t cut corners. While the students were at recess, the Chartwells crew installed a food prep station and provided the students with bowls and utensils.

When the students returned to the classroom they washed their hands, put on plastic gloves and – with the help from Chartwells – harvested the vegetables they had spent the last two months caring for.

One by one the students brought their bowls to the grow tower, where a Chartwells worker, Ernesto Mingao, snipped lettuce and herbs from the tower and put it in their bowls. Students then carried their bowls to the prep station, where the leaves were washed and chopped, by Chartwells worker Dylan Ruse. The chopped veggies were put back in the bowl and the student carried it back to their table.

At their tables, students found that Chartwells had provided shredded cheese, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes they could add to their salad bowls.

Then the Chartwells cooks snipped parsley, cilantro and basil from the grow tower, put it in a blender with olive oil and vinegar and blended it into a vinaigrette the kids could pour on their salads.

Chartwells also provided the classroom with avocados, salt and chopped onions that the kids used to make their own guacamole, which they made by squishing it all together with their gloved hands. For many of the students, the tactile sensations of squishing the ingredients together with their hands was the most fun part of the exercise. After the students finished making the guacamole, they got to eat it with tortilla chips.

TerraBirds Program Coordinator Nicole Houston was thrilled to hear about the students turning plants into a healthy, tasty meal.

“That whole circle of seed to table is the entire goal,” she said. “It makes us really happy to see a classroom using it for what is intended to be used for.”

Houston believes simple moments like these are often the first step a person takes to a life of healthy eating.

“In my personal experience with TerraBirds, we find that the most kids become most excited about their food when they have the chance to eat it,” she said. “For some of the kids in the grow tower program, it is their first time eating some of those vegetables. I think some of these kids will remember this day and eating a salad freshly picked, where the food in their bowl came from and what it looked like and tasted like. They got to experience the whole full-circle learning process.”

Desert View Intermediate Principal Mary Stahl can only encourage more programs like this in her school.

“One of the biggest things to come out of this is that it gets the kids thinking about where their food comes from,” she said. “It would be really cool to now go to the next step and put in some grow beds and gardens and get more grow towers in more classrooms.

“For something like this to be successful, it really takes a teacher who is into it, who will spearhead it and take on the extra responsibility. Mrs. Henderson was great to do that for her classroom, and now her students are enjoying the benefits of that.”