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A short growing season in many regions, including the Front Range, limits the role of locally grown produce, but two area projects were on display during National Food Day showing off energy-efficient techniques for extending the season and increasing productivity in small spaces.
A magnet school in Colorado Springs and a demonstration garden in Woodland Park were among 20,000 venues in all 50 states hosting events held in conjunction with Food Day on Oct. 24. Food Day, re-launched by Science in the Public Interest after a 34-year hiatus with support from more than 120 partner organizations, was aimed at promoting fresher, less processed food and generated considerable press coverage.
The two Colorado Springs-area projects showed that geodesic dome structures, first built in the 1960s, remain a popular design for greenhouses that can weather the winds and snows of a harsh winter climate while relying entirely on free energy from the sun.
A 40-foot model at the Galileo School of Math and Science, filled with crispy green lettuces, was shown off as a crown jewel in the district’s “Good Food Project” aimed at serving healthier school lunches. Built with $50,000 from a magnet school development grant, it was carefully planned with the goal of creating a lasting, economically self-sustaining school gardening program.
“What’s unique about this is that most school gardens become hobby gardens because they don’t have a constant revenue stream,” explained Rick Hughes, Colorado Springs District 11’s director of food service. “Eventually, the goal here is to hire a full-time master gardener.”
In fact, the district, which feeds thousands of children a day, would like to build more of the greenhouses at other schools and have an employee overseeing them all.
Toward that end, the food service department is buying 200 pounds of fresh lettuce weekly from the greenhouse at market prices, with the intention of creating a business model that other districts could adopt.
“Schools are starting to want the protocol to keep a program like this sustainable,” Hughes said. “It takes someone besides a volunteer to do it. You have to have a continuous cycle; the grant money was just to help us get started.”
Principal Robyn Colbert said its design — heavily influenced by permaculture principles, which emphasize holistic natural systems-based approaches — makes it cost-effective to run.
“I don’t pay anything out of my utilities budget to do this,” she said.
The "Growing Dome" is completely solar powered, circulating air through tubes that run under the gardening beds to keep them productive in the coldest days of winter.
A short growing season in many regions, including the Front Range, limits the role of locally grown produce, but two area projects were on display during National Food Day showing off energy-efficient techniques for extending the season and increasing productivity in small spaces.
A magnet school in Colorado Springs and a demonstration garden in Woodland Park were among 20,000 venues in all 50 states hosting events held in conjunction with Food Day on Oct. 24. Food Day, re-launched by Science in the Public Interest after a 34-year hiatus with support from more than 120 partner organizations, was aimed at promoting fresher, less processed food and generated considerable press coverage.
The two Colorado Springs-area projects showed that geodesic dome structures, first built in the 1960s, remain a popular design for greenhouses that can weather the winds and snows of a harsh winter climate while relying entirely on free energy from the sun.
A 40-foot model at the Galileo School of Math and Science, filled with crispy green lettuces, was shown off as a crown jewel in the district’s “Good Food Project” aimed at serving healthier school lunches. Built with $50,000 from a magnet school development grant, it was carefully planned with the goal of creating a lasting, economically self-sustaining school gardening program.
“What’s unique about this is that most school gardens become hobby gardens because they don’t have a constant revenue stream,” explained Rick Hughes, Colorado Springs District 11’s director of food service. “Eventually, the goal here is to hire a full-time master gardener.”
In fact, the district, which feeds thousands of children a day, would like to build more of the greenhouses at other schools and have an employee overseeing them all.
Toward that end, the food service department is buying 200 pounds of fresh lettuce weekly from the greenhouse at market prices, with the intention of creating a business model that other districts could adopt.
“Schools are starting to want the protocol to keep a program like this sustainable,” Hughes said. “It takes someone besides a volunteer to do it. You have to have a continuous cycle; the grant money was just to help us get started.”
Principal Robyn Colbert said its design — heavily influenced by permaculture principles, which emphasize holistic natural systems-based approaches — makes it cost-effective to run.
“I don’t pay anything out of my utilities budget to do this,” she said.
The "Growing Dome" is completely solar powered, circulating air through tubes that run under the gardening beds to keep them productive in the coldest days of winter.
School administrators first began thinking about having a greenhouse back in 2008. Eventually, Colbert got the idea to position it on top of some old tennis courts, eliminating the need to build an expensive new foundation. In addition to the dome, a series of raised beds and gathering spaces are planned on the rest of the lot.
The garden will be linked with the curriculum and with student gardening clubs, but it will also be a tool for outreach with the surrounding community.
“I’m going to have a lot of events out here,” Colbert said, envisioning community workshops in addition to class activities. “We have a big footprint here and what better way to use it? Just think, tennis to this? I can come out here in the winter and use it. It’s all about making the best use of our space and our resources.”
Staying green — even in winter
Thirty minutes west and a half-mile higher in elevation, the Harvest Center at Woodland Park set out to prove it is possible to grow food year-round in cost effective ways. The all-volunteer community organization produced 400 pounds of food this year, all of which was donated to a local food pantry.
Lee Willoughby, the secretary of the board, and his wife Kathy hosted an open house at the project’s 20-foot geodesic greenhouse, the recommended size to feed a small family. Started as a demonstration garden for hosting regular monthly workshops, they landed on the idea of taking its bounty of fresh, organic produce — representing many heirloom varieties and unusual offerings like kabocha, a Japanese squash — to the local food pantry where it is welcomed excitedly by the volunteers.
“We hope to get them hooked on fresh food and then encourage them to get involved,” Kathy explained. “It’s a demonstration. It’s to show people it can be done, and to draw people into learning more. That’s the main point.”
Growing Spaces Solar Greenhouses of Pagosa Springs erected both of the domes, each in a matter of days. The sloped shape made with triangular panels is quick to build (though you have to know what you’re doing to get all the pieces to fit) and exceedingly sturdy. The company promotes the greenhouses as “designed, engineered, and produced in Colorado for year-round gardening in the Rockies.” The concept originally emerged from founder Udgar Parsons’ desire to build affordable, efficient backyard greenhouses that encourage environmental sustainability. More than 1,000 have been sold.
For more about the company, visit growingspaces.com.
“We’re so enthusiastic about it,” Lee Willoughby said. “A part of our decision as a nonprofit center was that at the same time we talk about local food production, we want to talk about energy use. We could be sitting here in January, with two feet of snow on the ground and minus-20 degree temperatures at night, and there’d be no tomatoes and basil, but we’ll have spinach growing.”
While the bio-dome shell, coated in a tough polycarbonate glazing, is designed to capture and save as much sunlight as possible, a key element is a water tank carefully proportioned to the size of the structure. It acts as a natural form of thermal storage that moderates the surrounding climate.
“In the summer, in the greenhouse next door, it will be 130 degrees, while it’s 99 or 100 in here. That’s because the water tank is absorbing heat,” Willoughby explained.
“As the temperature drops, it releases heat. When the sun comes out, it starts absorbing it again.”
The Harvest Center, which operates an educational booth at the Woodland Park Farmers Market, has adapted this natural climate-control feature to other structures including a smaller 6-by-8-foot greenhouse nearby.
“It’s not year-round but with water barrels in there it will go further into the winter,” he explained. “With raised beds and plastic hoops, you can put gallon jugs of water inside, and it just gives you two or three degrees of protection to get your plants past the first frost.”
Silver “bubble wrap” material on the north side of the dome captures light from the sinking sun, reflects it back into the greenhouse and helps insulate it against heat loss, he added. One small fan powered by a solar panel helps to keep the air circulating in addition to a series of window vents that are automatically controlled by wax as it melts and firms up again in response to heat levels.
The greenhouse was built in connection with a five-year LiveWell Colorado grant to the Teller County Public Health Department. The Harvest Center also collaborates with several other area nonprofits and has benefited from the expansion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program — commonly referred to as EQIP — which provides technical assistance and cost-share for a wide range of conservation-related farming practices including transitioning to organic production or improving the efficiency of irrigation systems.
“They are basically responding to the interest people are showing around the country in fresh food and small scale growing,” Willoughby said.
