Seed Starting Workshop

As we summarize useful insights from our previous research in urban farming, we found that, although people get interested in urban farming, they lack fundamental knowledges hands-on experiences with growing plants. On the other hand, seeing and understanding the difficulties of the process of growing food raises people’s respect for food. That is why we were motivated to engage our community members with hands-on growing activities, which promotes a sustainable lifestyle as well.

Our Seed Starting Workshop consisted of a hands-on moment for people to start their plant baby in recycled containers.

What is Seed Starting？

• A process of growing plants from seeds to seedlings
• Once becomes seedlings, they are transplanted to the garden
• Enables growing crops early in the season, allowing heat-loving plants to mature and bear fruits for a longer time

Why Seed Starting?

Food Service Benefits:

• Relatively inexpensive
• Provides access to locally-grown foods
• Expands variety of menu offerings
• Introductions to food service operations

General Benefits:

• Enjoyed by all ages
• Promotes life-long healthy eating habits
• Provides hands-on learning opportunities for students
• Promote recycling consciousness

To prepare for the workshop, we purchased the components for our seed-starting mix through online vendors. The mix consisted of 3 main components:

• Coconut Coir: coconut coir provides the structure that allows the roots to grow healthily. It is very similar to soil in texture, but is far lighter, allowing for better drainage.
• Perlite: the most important property perlite provides is drainage. These lightweight ‘rocks’ fill in the spaces between the small coco peat fibers, creating little air pockets.
• Vermiculite: vermiculite’s main benefit is water retention. It holds water incredibly well and delivers it slowly to the roots, preventing over-saturation while limiting your need to moisten the soil often.
• The suggested ratio of each components is 2 units of Coconut Coir, 1 unit of Perlite and 1 unit of Vermiculite.

We collected recycled containers: Everybody in our university community unconsciously creates certain amounts of plastic wastes which may contain: plastic water bottles, delivery-food containers and bags, coffee cups, packages for delivery and any other packages or containers for commodities. But when we pay more attention to our carbon footprints, we’re able to collect abundant reusable containers. For this workshop, we collected coffee cups, beverage bottles, cardboard saucers and even egg containers. We also encourage people to collect a few before they come to the workshop. We put the suggestion on our poster for the workshop.

We combine in-class insights and research informations about various kinds of seeds and the appropriate seasons and environment conditions for them to grow. After locating several seeds like spinach, bok choy, lettuce, basil etc. We also discussed with our professor Andy who suggested that we should use lettuce as it turned out to be the easiest and most suitable seed for growing among all previous experiments.

People were all well engaged in our event. They asked questions about the contents, such as what’s the difference between growing seeds in ordinary soil and a customized seed-starting mix.

They followed every step we introduced. Everybody had fun when we played with the mud coconut coir. The coconut coir was originally dry and hard so we have to put water to break it into soft soil textures. When we began to smash the coconut coir, few people joined, afraid of making their hands full of mud. But as we moved on, more and more people are willing to try because it was super relaxing when we touched the soil.

People had relatively good participation, especially when it comes to the hands-on activities, everybody was willing to engage, communicate and cooperate with one another, forming a cozy atmosphere for the event. Participants were also happy about hands-on activities, preparing soil was described “satisfying”. We concluded later that seed-starting preparation is also beneficial for boosting mental wellness attributing to the sensory stimulation it has brought.

Finally, we observed that most people lack agriculture knowledge and growing experience, such as they will keep asking how they put the seeds properly and how much amount of water is adequate for their seeds, and when we encourage them to bring the seeds back home, most of them chose to leave them in the studio so that we can take good care of them, indicating a disacquaintance and fright for caring plants. We assumed that this feeling came from the lack of knowledge for farming.

Written by: Eadin Wand and Freddie Yang