Southern Local students donate hydroponic lettuce to community pantry

Southern Local Middle School students have been growing lettuce in their hydroponics lab, and their latest harvest is helping feed the community.

Seventh-grade science teacher Amanda Wrobleski said 36 heads of butterhead lettuce were donated to the Salineville Community Center Food Pantry Nov. 14 for distribution that weekend. She said students typically use the produce they grow for themselves but wanted to do something different this fall.

“We wanted to do a fall planting and it would be ready around the middle of November. A student said it was the ‘Month of Giving,’ so why not give it away to the Salineville Community Center,” Wrobleski said. “The seventh-graders pulled the lettuce and put them into bags, then we donated it.”

An anonymous donor supplied salad dressing and croutons, and Wrobleski took students to the center that Friday to deliver the items.

Wrobleski is in her second year of running the hydroponics program, with about 45 students helping tend the small crop. The soilless method uses rockwool cubes made from heated basalt rock to start the seeds, and plants grow in a system that circulates distilled water and liquid nutrients. Students separate the rockwool and arrange the plants in rows, monitor their growth, test the water’s pH and clean the 30-gallon reservoir every few weeks.

“I think they appreciate the process because it can be done without soil. This is an alternative way of growing, and it’s important to investigate alternative ways,” she said. “I enjoy the fact that this happens every year, and the kids enjoy it.”

Another planting is scheduled for January and should be ready by spring.

“That planting we’ll harvest and eat for our ‘Lettuce for Lunch’ event, where we have a salad buffet for the students, faculty and staff,” she said. “We always have an overabundance.”

Scott Hart, food pantry director, welcomed the donation and said students were learning both science and community responsibility.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to promote learning and giving back,” Hart said, noting the pantry generally helps about 135 households and closer to 200 at Thanksgiving. “It had gone up with the SNAP situation that was resolved, but we’re ready. The food pantry is always ready.”