City students learn the art of climate-smart container gardening
STUDENTS OF Kingston Technical High School and members of the school’s 4-H Club recently attended a comprehensive training session on the set-up and maintenance of container gardens, as part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s CityAdapt pilot project in Jamaica.
CityAdapt is designed to introduce a range of nature-based solutions to the country’s urban communities and schools, in order to bolster resilience and adaptability to climate change. The project, in partnership with the Jamaica 4-H Clubs, has piloted a suite of climate-smart interventions in city schools, including hydroponics (the practice of growing plants in a water-based, nutrient-rich solution rather than in soil), rainwater harvesting, drip irrigation, water storage systems, and greenhouses, in order to equip students with first-hand knowledge of the practices that will help them to respond to the realities of a changing climate, particularly in smaller, densely populated city spaces.
Facilitated by Jonros Brown and Tanique Williams from the College of Agriculture, Science and Education, the exciting, hands-on training at Kingston Technical High School’s greenhouse exposed students to the best practices for maintaining container gardens, including how to plant, water, recognise soil types, and fertilise crops.
“Container gardens are ideal for planting in urban areas where space for farming is much less than in rural areas,” noted Brown.
In addition, container gardens are naturebased interventions that help provide economic opportunities and help to build community resilience to climate change by providing a source of fresh, nutritious produce that encourages longterm food security.
“Some of what we grow goes to parents, some we sell, and some we donate,” explained one student, as a group attended to a greenhouse boasting a range of crops, including tomatoes, Scotch bonnet peppers and lettuce; with cabbage, callaloo, okra, and pak choi to be introduced in coming weeks.
“Kingston Technical is one of the many schools that we have done interventions in. We’ve done four interventions at the school, including container gardening, rainwater harvesting, irrigation ,and refurbishing of the school’s greenhouse,” explained Jamaica 4-H Clubs CityAdapt project lead, Shunelle Nevers.
“All of these projects are really important because we are in the urban space, and so we want to ensure that we can create greenery in the city as much as possible. Everything that we do here is to facilitate climate change adaptation, and to introduce the farm-to-table concept to the community,” she added.
The beneficiary schools are Tivoli High School, Camperdown High School, St Andrew Technical High School, and the Abilities Foundation.