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Urban Agriculture Lab
Since last fall Spark-Y has been working with Project Sweetie Pie (a partner non-profit organization in North Minneapolis) to install a garden bench with a built-in planter at the Celestial Gardens in North Minneapolis. We were recently able to complete the build with the assistance of a crew of staff, volunteers, and other community partners.
The following blog post was written by Jeremy Alsaker, Sustainability Educator at Spark-Y.
At Spark-Y we love winter, even as we enter the dreaded stretch of cold from January through March. Why? Because we have the chance to plan for what we’re going to do in the Spring! To help us get through the next few cold months, we embrace the opportunity to plan our spring and summer plantings and projects. Planning is vital to all our projects, especially those that involve planting. In particular, native plants require a lot of planning since many of them have specific times when they can put down roots. We especially like planning and planting when our youth can be involved. So, that is why we are so excited to begin another project with the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization (MWMO). Starting this February, we will be working with the MWMO to install a green rooftop on their headquarters in Minneapolis.
Photo of Noble Rot rooftop in Portland, OR. Photo taken from their website.
We previously partnered with the MWMO to build a hydroponics system on their rooftop and have seen firsthand the great work the MWMO does for the community, and up and down our region of the Mississippi.
The MWMO’s green roof (seen here in September 2016) captures stormwater and slows the flow of runoff from the building. Green roofs provide a variety of benefits for the building occupants as well as to the environment.
In their own words: “The MWMO encompasses 25,309 acres (39.5 square miles) of fully developed urban lands and waters. We partner with our member communities to invest in green infrastructure that captures, cleans and reuses stormwater runoff. Our team monitors and tracks water quality in the watershed and conducts education and outreach to promote active environmental stewardship among residents.”
Aerial image of MWMO building and property showing proximity of building to Mississippi River to the west (left side of image). Image taken from Google Earth 2023.
Their mission “to lead, and to foster stewardship of the watershed with actions that promote civic ownership and responsibility and through measures that achieve diverse and functional ecosystems” will help us reach our goals of empowering youth to learn about sustainability.
How can we not be excited?
The MWMO reached out to Spark-Y to improve their green infrastructure at their headquarters in Northeast Minneapolis (just a hop, skip, and a jump from our own HQ). The MWMO already practices many water-saving strategies on their property, including rainwater storage, permeable pavers, rain gardens, and earthworks. We are excited to extend their efforts to the roof!
Green roofs provide many ecological services if executed properly. They help to slow the flow of stormwater, which reduces erosion and pollution runoff, and lengthens the life of management systems. Additionally, green roofs reduce the energy needed to heat or cool a building by providing shade, thermal mass, and insulation. Our green roof in particular will provide habitat for native species of both flora and fauna, which is at a premium in urban environments.
Image of the layers involved in a green rooftop installation, including non-permeable layers, a rockbed layer, soil and then a plant layer. Photo taken from Knapp, & Schmauck, Sebastian & Zehnsdorf, Andreas. (2019). Biodiversity Impact of Green Roofs and Constructed Wetlands as Progressive Eco-Technologies in Urban Areas. Sustainability. 11. 5846. 10.3390/su11205846.
Rooftop planter with natives from designer Julie Farris for Gardenista - taken from their website (photo by Matthew Williams)
Starting this month, we will be enlisting the help of our youth partners to renovate and expand the green roof on the top of the MWMO headquarters. The rest of this winter and early spring, we will be educating our youth on green roof best practices, how to work safely, and the native plant species which will be soon growing up there. They will be designing the layout and infrastructure, deciding which plants to plant, and, when the time comes, they will install the whole thing (with a little help from our wonderful staff)! We are excited to spend the rest of the winter planning, prepping, and looking forward to that first thaw.
Please follow along as we reveal more and share updates on our social media channels, here on our blog and in our newsletter. If you have a youth that you think would be interested in joining us on this or any of our other projects, or if you think this is the kind of event you would like to volunteer at, please reach out here on our website.
Photo of the rooftop garden atop the City of Chicago City Hall Building in downtown Chicago - taken from the City of Chicago website.
A crowd of people learning about rooftop gardening at Toronto Urban Growers - taken from their website (photo by Ivan Emke).
About the Spark-Y Right Track+ Internship: The Right Track+ program is a collaboration between Ramsey County, the City of Saint Paul, local employers, and community organizations including Spark-Y. The goal of this program is to provide job training and professional development to unemployed or underemployed young adults experiencing the negative economic impacts of the pandemic for the purpose of assisting them in entering an in-demand career pathway.
The following post was written by Chue Yang, Right Track+ Intern with Spark-Y.
Near the end of August, Spark-Y teamed up with some volunteers from Accenture to help build a raised bed and compost bin for Friendship Academy of Arts. I have been an intern with Spark-Y for a couple of months now and each week there were always exciting new projects for the interns to work on. There was the hope that it will not rain, as I helped the Sustainability and Agriculture Director, Caitlin, set up two large white tents for the compost bin and raised garden bed projects.
The day before, I had to grab a large 50 gallons water barrel from the University of Minnesota which barely fit in my little Prius for the project build. Spark-Y continued to find ways to reuse old and donated materials to create sustainable projects that are closely tied to its mission of empowering youth with hands-on education and sustainability.
As we prepared the materials and started to cut the wood pieces for the two projects, Accenture volunteers and the students at Friendship Academy of Art began to show up. Students take turns drilling holes and screwing the wood pieces together. The Accenture volunteers were great at leading and guiding the students. The structures for holding the compost bin and the raised garden bed started to take their form. The feeling of seeing the two projects coming together brought smiles both to the adults and small students.
Compost Bin Structure & Raised Garden Bed Project Build
It was such as cool experience to see the little shy students, who were a little scared of the loud noise of the saws and drills at first, started to want to take turns cutting and putting the wood pieces together for the compost bin and raised garden bed structure. One student proudly expressed that she “loved drill” as she finished screwing the last few screws for the structures that would hold the compost bin. A little student who was probably still in preschool bravely volunteered to drill some holes into the water barrel that will be used as the compost bin. It brought a smile to my face seeing how much joy the students were having with the project build.
Completing the two projects took less than three hours with the help of the students and volunteers. This experience made me realize how important it is to work together as a team. It showed that more students should have the opportunity to learn about sustainability. They learned not only the importance of creating a compost bin that will turn food waste and old plant materials into compost to grow more food but also got to try something new. I also noticed that not many organizations would have their staff with executive positions working on the ground to help students learn. It just showed how much Spark-Y cared about the learning of youth and creating growth through sustainability.
Learn more about Friendship Academy Build Day in our previous blog post here.
About the Spark-Y Right Track+ Internship: The Right Track+ program is a collaboration between Ramsey County, the City of Saint Paul, local employers, and community organizations including Spark-Y. The goal of this program is to provide job training and professional development to unemployed or underemployed young adults experiencing the negative economic impacts of the pandemic for the purpose of assisting them in entering an in-demand career pathway.
My name is Jordan Bergstrom. I am a senior at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, studying Urban Infrastructure and the Environment. I am an aspiring vertical farmer, and am planning on attending grad school to earn an MPS in Horticulture. My passions include the intersection of sustainability and environmentalism and urban areas. After hearing about Spark-Y at a career fair, I decided to apply for the Right-Track internship program. Since then, I have started maintaining and operating the aquaponic systems and managing many of the gardens that Spark-Y maintains. Prior to this internship, I knew little about the operation of these systems, however I have learned so much about vertical farming and aquaponic/hydroponic growing techniques since starting this position!
Vertical growing greens at Spark-Y’s Urban Agriculture Lab
Vertical farming is a foundational aspect of Spark-Y’s operations and mission. Using primarily aquaponic technology, Spark-Y has set up a number of vertical farm systems in a plethora of schools across the Twin Cities metro. For those who haven’t heard of vertical farming and aquaponics, as they are still relatively new phenomena, vertical farming is a vertically oriented method of food production achieved through either tower designs, growing racks, or conceptual terraced designs (which are far more rare). Aquaponics is a subset of vertical farming which combines hydroponic technology, which is a soilless method of growing that utilizes constant root exposure to nutrient-rich water, with aquaculture, the raising of fish and other aquatic life. Through a symbiotic relationship, the waste produced by fish is utilized as a fertilizer for plants, after being chemically transformed from Ammonium to Nitrate by bacteria growing in the system. Since water is recycled, the only inputs into the system are fish food and seeds/light layers of soil.
Aquaponic and hydroponic methods of growing have enormous environmental benefits in comparison to conventional farming, using 99% less land, 90% less water, and 100% less harmful chemicals than in soil cultivation. Additionally, these systems allow for urban production, allowing for hyper-localized produce production that eliminates transportation emissions and results in riper, healthier produce in comparison with imported varieties. The only major downside to aquaponic/hydroponic production is increased energy usage due to grow-lights, however this is partially offset by eliminating the need for motorized farm implements as well as decreased land usage for agriculture.
At Spark-Y’s headquarters, there is a large timber frame aquaponic structure set up that produces microgreens each week. My role in this system is to germinate the seeds, place them in the system, then harvest, package, and deliver the microgreens to the Eastside Food Co-op each week. The planting process involves gathering plastic trays, sprinkling a light layer of dirt in them, weighing out the correct number of seeds, and sprinkling the seeds throughout the trays. After this, the trays are sprayed lightly in the sink, and then sprayed with hydrogen peroxide. The water and peroxide help the seeds to germinate (sprout). To aid this process, the seeds are stacked up and weighed down with heavy objects as seeds also respond well under stronger gravitational pressure. After a few days, the germinated seeds are unstacked and placed in the aquaponic system, where the water and nutrients feed them for a few days until they are ready to be harvested. Other maintenance on this system includes testing the fish tank water to make sure chemical levels are safe for fish production, cleaning tanks, and replacing tank water.
In addition to the aquaponic systems, there is a hydroponic grow tower in the Urban Agriculture Lab. The grow tower consists of a water reservoir in the base, a pump that pumps water through a tube up to the top level of the grow rack, spigots that release water into the rows, and rows of plants that consist of a hard sponge-like material that’s bent around a white cloth strip and plants grown in little soil plugs. After the water cycles down through the racks, what isn't used by the plants or evaporated is cycled back into the system. So far, we have had some trouble getting the plants to survive, largely due to plugged spigots and possibly due to intense lighting. We are altering aspects of the tower week by week and recording changes in a spreadsheet. Regardless of the results, this will give us useful experience in growing plants hydroponically!
Overall, it's a lot of work managing aquaponic and hydroponic systems. However I think, these growing methods have the power to revolutionize our food systems if implemented correctly. Vertical farming gives us the potential to achieve food sovereignty as communities, both localizing food production and democratizing it by lessening dependence on large multinational corporations. It comes with plenty of environmental, economic, and health benefits, and will only become a more attractive option as technology and public opinions shift. Hopefully, by teaching youth about these growing methods and allowing them to practice these methods will empower them to play active roles in the ever growing sustainable economy!
