New course provides deeper dive into hydroponics

This course is Production of food crops in Controlled Environment Ag. It's a new class that I'm teaching this spring. Decided to develop this course because we weren't teaching students anything about hydroponics. Hydroponics is growing plants out of soil, in a nutrient solution. There's both a need from the industry for students to be trained in this, but also a desire from students to learn about it. One of the main things we're focusing on is how to grow various food crops within these systems, utilizing different substrates, which is things that we grow the plants in. We're experimenting with a lot of different hydroponic growing systems. We have deepwater culture, which is kind of this large tank of water, and we're growing lettuce on top of it. We also have Dutch Bato buckets. There are these tomatoes are being strung up onto rope. We're kind of looking at how the nutrients go into our water and how those things affect plant growth and how they need to be regulated throughout the growing season. We have the ability to steer crops very easily with fertility, but then that means that we also have that responsibility. So we need to check the systems daily, checking electrical conductivity, which is how much salt is in the water, making sure that the plants are not getting burned, but they're also getting enough food so that they remain happy and healthy. Actually, getting that hands on experience has been very, very helpful, especially when cultivating my own personal career goals and making sure this is something that I want to do in the future. I'm getting a lot of exposure to a lot of these systems. Without this class, I would have to read about it. And probably in industry have a big learning curve. I can go out into the industry and be like, oh, I've already done that and I think that's a really good skill. Plants don't read the books. Plants don't listen to my lectures. Plants don't come to class. And so we still have to go to the greenhouse and we still have to work with the plants. For me, one of the things that's really important is that students graduate with the ability to make decisions, to support their decisions, and learn from their mistakes. If all learning takes place in the classroom, then we shield students from the mistakes they would experience in the greenhouse.