The USF St. Petersburg Gardening Club is planting seeds and growing future gardeners. After a rocky start involving conflicts with administration and a sudden change in leadership, the Gardening Club has found a successor and is building a foundation for its future.
William Nicks and Luke Hoerner are currently sharing leadership duties. They have divided club meetings between Monday and Thursday, and are training Abbey Wakely to be the head gardener next year. Besides Wakely, most of the club members are seniors. In an effort to keep the club alive after they graduate, the Gardening Club is reaching out to the university and the community.
One way they hope to attract new members is through individual student projects.
“We have a few students who have reserved plots and are experimenting with aquaculture, fluid dynamics and solar growing methods,” Nicks said.
The Gardening Club has recently been working with the physics department, hosting research on barrelponics—a relatively new type of aquaculture that makes use of barrels, PVC and other common home improvement goods.
They are also collaborating with Edible Peace Patch and other community gardens. The club receives seeds and trees and in exchange advertises the community gardens on their own garden fence.
This season they are growing broccoli, onions, jalapenos, chilies and bell peppers. At its current size the garden can only yield enough crops to feed the gardeners, but in the future they hope to expand enough to provide food for the Reef. For the present they are working with Sodexo—the school’s food services provider—in smaller ways, collecting used coffee grinds and cardboard and using them as gardening materials. The coffee grinds get mixed in with the soil to decompose, and the cardboard is used as a biodegradable weed blocking system.
The club’s newest endeavor is a push to get rain barrels to feed the watering system in the beds. The barrels would eventually pay for themselves and save significant amounts of water.
“The garden has evolved into a way for students to come together and experiment with sustainable gardening methods,” Nicks said.
Those interested in joining the Gardening Club should contact William Nicks at (727) 520-5796.
I like pina coladas in the snow.