Over the course of a season, participants will learn the fundamentals of creating and participating in a sustainable, local food system. We begin by learning the importance of composting, diverting valuable nutrients out of the landfill in order to arc-weld a broken, linear food system into a self-sustained closed-loop food cycle.  We take our students through all of the cutting edge zero-waste methods of growing, harvesting, preparing, preserving, distributing and recycling their own food. Students decide on a group prepared food product (pickles, pesto, kim chi, salsa, sauces, or herbal vinegars) and develop a marketing plan and campaign for it as well. Please visit us at www.growingSOUL.org, and join us as we connect, educate and nourish our community to grow the healthy soil in which good food and strong communities grow & tahrive.

Come join us as we explore, learn about and create a zero-waste, sustainable food system. Our curriculum is a hands-on experience, creating a closed-loop food system fueled by waste vegetable oil and includes: vermicomposting, composting, nutrition, aquaponics, and container food production of shoots and greens, simple preparation and preservation of foods including canning and fermenting pickles, kim chi and salsa, and recycling and filtering tortilla chip fryer oil to run a mobile farmers market!

Lesson 1: Discussing Closing the Loop: Where does Your Food Come From?;  Interconnecting Composting, Food Production, Processing,  Preservation, and Distribution; Deciding A Final Group Product: pickles & kim chi, salsa & pasta sauce, or pesto & herb vinegars

Lessons 2&3: Nature’s Cycles & the Importance of Soil; Why Compost?; The Wonder of Worms: Vermicomposting, Platinum for Plants; Building a Worm Bin, Harvesting Castings for Shoot Production & Recycling Worms Back into the Vermicompost System

Lesson 4: The Foundation of Building a Movable Food System: Container Gardening; Planting to Grow Shoots in castings & coir from seeds and beans the students bring in

Lessons 5 &6: Aquaponics: Farming with Fish: The Ultimate Closed-Loop Growing System; Set up pickles & kim chi, salsa & pasta sauce, or pesto & herb vinegars container gardening; monitor shoot production

Lesson 7: Coloring Our Plates with a Rainbow of Seasonal Foods; Introduce the most nutrient rich produce grown locally; harvest shoots for a home-grown snack
The most Nutrient Rich Foods we Can Grow Locally:
in ground (raised beds, compost berms, 4 gallon pots): sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, daikon, ginger, garlic, onions

above ground (raised beds, berms) brassicas - cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts

greens in pots above ground kim chi & pesto garden (raised beds, compost berms, 1 gallon pots): kale, chard, spinach, collards, mustard greens, green onion

fruiting vines as base for salsa / pizza sauce garden (in pots with cages, aquaponics) tomatoes, peppers

herbs (in pots in aquaponics): cilantro, basil, parsley, thyme, chives

shoots (in flats with castings and coir): sunflower, peas, chia, lentils, radish, broccoli

Lesson 8: Preserving our Food: Fermenting, Pickling & Canning

Lesson 9: The Foundation of Building a Movable Food System: Fueling It by Reusing Straight Waste-Vegetable Oil and Recycling WVO into Bio-Diesel


Lesson 10: Let’s Eat: Preparing the “Fruits” of our Labor: Making Simple Seasonal Snacks on a Budget: Spectacular Salads, pickles, kim chi and a Plethora of Pestos