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US (NY): SUNY Potsdam brings new tower farms on campus

At SUNY Potsdam’s new greenhouse, college students, elementary school kids and local residents are learning how to grow greens — in mid air.

On Monday, the Wagner Institute for Sustainability and Ecological Research Center hosted a workshop on building Tower Gardens — plastic pillars with plants set into the sides.

Teaching the workshop was Duane C. McCarthy of LDC Enterprises, which manufacturers the Tower Gardens, and Stephen Ritz, an educator and administrator from New York City who created an initiative to grow food in public schools in the Bronx named the Bronx Green Machine.

“It (started) literally by mistake,” said Mr. Ritz. “Someone sent me a box of daffodils and I had no idea what they were, I thought they were onions.”

Mr. Ritz stashed the bulbs behind a radiator, where they sprouted.

“During a gang fight in class, we found all these flowers,” he said. “That was the teachable moment in the south Bronx, when gang kids started waving flowers.”

Mr. Ritz started planting flowers with children around the city, and then brought in Tower Gardens to the classroom, writing curriculum to implement them into classes.

Read more at the Watertown Daily Times (Abraham Kenmore)
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