Armstrong High to get fresh strawberries from an unusual location

The garden is on the roof and some of it doesn’t even need soil, which is pretty magical. Sweet delicious strawberry magic.

November 20, 2015; 9:09 AM • by Richard Hayes

Carverponics‘ mission is to provide opportunities for incoming Carver and VCU students to change the urban environment into a place that provides both food and shelter. The nature of the city is non-porous, so shelter is easy. But growing needs creative solutions and that’s where Carverponics steps in.

This fall we were asked to do a garden project at Armstrong High School in RVA (Richmond, Virginia) by one of the science teachers. We stepped up to the challenge by building a custom soil-less hydroponic system as well as aeroponic and soil plant production systems. We upcycled plastic buckets headed for the dump, as well as scrap timber, PVC left over from the 2015 UCI World Road Championship, and had friends donate awesome aeroponic and PV equipment.

The kids wanted to grow strawberries, so we planted about 100 strawberry plants total at the school, and in spring, students will be able to compare fruit production of the three systems to see which is more efficient. We have installed solar panels and are working to finish installing a rainwater harvesting system.

Right now, we are capturing rainwater to re-use in our systems, which this video fails to show, but we will hopefully amend that once our gutters are fully installed!

See more of Carverponics’ work on Facebook.