Growing Food VerticallyDan Lohaus, Director – Green Initiatives

SUS officially launched it’s Urban Agriculture Program nearly one month ago and I am happy to report that it is growing strong.

With the help of Green Living Technologies, SUS started urban gardens at three of it’s programs: The Knickerbocker Residence for formerly homeless veterans, The Hicks Day Habilitation for developmentally disabled individuals, and The Mother Gaston Residence for those with mental Illness. But these are no ordinary urban gardens: to make the most of the limited growing space at each facility, SUS is growing food vertically.

On June 17th and 18th at The Knickerbocker Residence, nearly 40 SUS staff and consumers were trained in urban organic agricultural techniques and planted over 2300 tomato and basil plants into four A-Frame Vertical Growing Systems. Each A-Frame System offers 96 square feet of growing area on just 48 square feet of ground space. The Knickerbocker garden is expected to yield nearly 1.5 tons of tomatoes and basil by the time the growing season ends in late fall. Knickerbocker consumers will not only continue to manage and maintain the garden but they will also take part in harvesting the produce and distributing it to other SUS programs.

At The Mother Gaston Residence and The Hicks Day Habilitation program, a number of SUS consumers have been actively involved with the gardens and took part in planting over 200 tomato plants on “Edible Walls”. It’s estimated that these two gardens will produce a total of over 300 pounds of tomatoes by the end of the growing season. In addition, consumers at each of these facilities are taking advantage of additional garden space and have begun to plan for a fall planting, which will include cool-weather crops like lettuces, greens, spinach and peas.