Bottle Drives help collect empty water bottles from the school’s cafeteria to clean, sterilize, and reuse in building Portable Gardens to grow greens. Standard 16.9 oz/500mL water bottles are what make up the Portable Gardens.
Bottle Drive from Ragsdale High School’s cafeteria.
Mini Bottle Drive at Greensboro’s City Market.
Contact us if interested in taking part.
Bottle Drive is part of the Food Growing League
Portable Gardens are built out of common materials to make growing food simple and inexpensive so even someone living in an apartment can set one up. Portable Gardens are different depending on what’s being grown.
The 3 Bottle Top Portable Garden Mini Bin (PG3) fits on virtually all window sills. It can provide a decent sized harvest with a limited clean up. Used primarily for growing short 2 week microgreen foods.
The 12 Bottle Top Portable Garden Bin (PG12) has a harvest four times the size of the PG3. All bottle tops get watered at once thanks to a shared water source. However, the bin clean up takes longer and requires a larger team to operate.
The 15 Bottle Top Portable Garden with Lid Bin (PG15) increases the potential yield 25% compared to the PG12 with the easy cleaning of the PG3. PG15 normally comes with a Diode Emitting Light (L.E.D.) that increases growth time by as much as half compared to greens grown by sunlight. It makes it that much more fun to check in daily to see how much the plants have grown.
Smaller ledges can hold PG3’s on their own or PG12’s & PG15’s with some adjustments. Window sills with ledges 6 inches or more in depth (typical size of school window sills) are ideal for the PG12 & PG15.
Portable Garden is part of the Food Growing League
The Harvest Sheet records the weights or heights from each monthly harvest (digital scale or ruler provided with kit). This info is used to come up with the data for League Competition and Rankings. These numbers can also be used in the Math and Science Lab lessons. Login details to report scores and watch training videos are found on the back of the Harvest Sheet.
Harvest Sheet is part of the Food Growing League
Depending on what’s being grown, students use one or more types of Plant Food to help their plants reach a healthy harvest. Students also learn not to use too much of a nutrient because it can hurt their plants.
Plant Food is part of the Food Growing League