The Leafy Green Machine is coming to the UMass Dartmouth campus. Dining services expects to plant lettuce seeds in it next week. “This is pretty amazing stuff,” said Kevin Gibbons, executive chef at UMass Dartmouth’s dining services, describing the 40-foot trailer that will soon be a garden on wheels for the local school. “We expect to harvest a thousand heads of lettuce in the middle of winter.”
UMD will be the second university in the state to grow greens vertically and hydroponically (without soil) to help students and staff learn about and access fresh, locally grown produce.
Worcester State University received its shipping container earlier this week and Stony Brook University in New York is the only other campus in the nation to have one, according to Caroline Katsiroubas, community manager at the Freight Farms in Boston that supplies the trailer and the technology.