Students will investigate the importance of nutrients for plant growth and discover how plants grow without soil by growing and observing plants in a test tube hydroponic system.
After learning the five basic requirements of plant growth, students discuss terms related to hydroponics. Students then build and maintain hydroponic units from soda bottles.
On the cramped urban campus of Boston Latin School, students grow an acre's worth of vegetables in an old shipping container that's been transformed into a computer-controlled hydroponic farm. Using a wall-mounted keyboard or a mobile app, the student farmers can monitor their crops, tweak the climate, make it rain and schedule sunrise. Use this article to illustrate an example of hydroponics, the use of technology in agriculture, and/or urban farming.
Visit a vertical farm, Bowery Farming. The farm is a piece of proprietary software that makes most of the critical decisions -- like when to harvest and how much to water each plant. It still takes humans to carry out many tasks around the farm. Will robots change the need for farm laborers?