Sowing skills for living

March 13, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Adults and students with disabilities learn horticultural skills, good work habits

McClatchy Newspapers

MEDINA, Ohio

Workers at a new hydroponic greenhouse here are doing more than growing lettuce.

They’re also sowing the seeds of independence.

This is Medina Creative Produce, a growing operation where adults and students with disabilities learn horticultural skills and good work habits while being paid for their labor. The 2,500-square-foot greenhouse is handicap-accessible to accommodate workers in wheelchairs.

Recently, the workers harvested their first bibb lettuce, grown in a hydroponic system that uses nutrient-laced water instead of soil. They plan to expand eventually to other varieties of lettuce, as well as herbs and edible flowers.

The project is an arm of Medina Creative Housing, a nonprofit corporation that provides housing and other supportive services for people who are developmentally and physically disabled. The greenhouse is just steps from the cluster of independent-living apartments where some of the workers live.

Medina Creative Produce is part of the supervised, supportive employment program operated by Medina Creative Housing, Executive Director Dianne DePasquale-Hagerty said.

The program operates two groups called enclaves, one of which focuses on horticulture and the other on property maintenance and general construction. Both are designed to teach marketable skills in a real-life setting, she said.

Worker Brenda Valore was clearly enjoying planting seeds one day recently with help from co-worker Lindsey Zura. Valore doesn’t speak, but she nodded enthusiastically with a broad smile as DePasquale-Hagerty explained her task of dropping lettuce seeds into trays filled with tiny cubes of rock wool, the medium in which they’ll sprout and grow.

The trays stay for a week or so in what’s called the nursery, a section of the greenhouse where the seeds are allowed to sprout. Once the sprouts have four or five leaves, they’re transplanted into channels to grow to maturity.

A channel resembles a covered aluminum gutter with holes cut in the top to accommodate the plants and the plugs of rock wool in which they grow. The roots reach down into the channel, where a solution of water and nutrients circulates to feed the plants.

The solution flows through a holding tank and then into a receptacle, where the pH level is monitored electronically and adjusted if necessary, greenhouse worker Andrew Shields explained. The enclosed system eliminates runoff, he said.

A lettuce plant takes four to five weeks to grow big enough to harvest, Shirley said. Just how long depends on the time of year and the amount of light the plants receive.

Harvesting involves pulling the whole plant from the channel and trimming its roots, Shields said. The plants are then packed for delivery on refrigerated trucks, while the trimmings go into a compost pile for use in two vegetable gardens adjacent to the apartments.

No pesticides are used in the growing operation. A powerful blower called an air curtain keeps insects from entering when people come into the greenhouse, and sticky traps catch most of the unwanted bugs that make their way past that safeguard. Workers use magnifying glasses to examine plants daily for the most persistent pests and remove them by hand.

Four natural-gas heating units keep the temperature at 78 degrees. In warmer weather, exhaust fans will take excess heat out.

Humidity is controlled by a “wet wall,” a wall covered with a paperlike filter material. When humidity is too high, the material absorbs the excess moisture. When it’s too low, water from a pipe wets the wall, and fans blow on it to send moisture into the air.

The lettuce is grown in six groups with staggered planting times. That ensures there will always be lettuce ready for harvest, DePasquale-Hagerty explained.

The greenhouse will produce 900 heads of lettuce a week in two harvests of 450 heads each, she said.

Most of the harvest will be sold to area restaurants and to the nearby Cloverleaf school district for use in its cafeterias. Medina Creative Produce plans to make the rest available for the public to order at www.medinacreativehousing.com.

The greenhouse project cost $200,000, including the land, DePasquale-Hagerty said. She said the money came from grants, fundraising and donations.

The building was completed in January, and planting started late that month.

Medina Creative Housing chose to develop a hydroponic greenhouse because it’s an environmentally sound operation where people with a variety of abilities can succeed, Shirley said. Those with physical limitations might not be able to handle all the tasks in a traditional greenhouse, but a hydroponic system is more adaptable, she said.

Two workers are assigned only to planting seeds because of their limitations, but the rest rotate through various jobs so they learn all aspects of the operation. “Nobody’s left behind at all,” Shields said.

That’s in keeping with the purpose of the supportive employment enclaves, which is to broaden job opportunities for people with disabilities, DePasquale-Hagerty said.

“People were finding it very difficult to find employment in the community,” because they were trained for only a limited number of jobs, she said. The skills they learn through Medina Creative Housing’s enclaves should prepare them for a wider range of work, she said.