As explained in earlier sections of this Guide, Stephen's system of choice is the Tower Garden. With his current Tower Garden installations, Stephen and his students are growing 37 kinds of edible plants and flowers--in just one of his classrooms!

Tower Gardens are aeroponic growing environments, which means they require no soil. They're great because they're relatively compact (2.5ftx2.5ft), highly efficient, and each tower only takes around 30-45 minutes to assemble. The simple and replicable nature of the assembly process makes it easy to teach students how to put the towers together, and provides additional opportunities for learning.

Each Tower Garden has a twenty gallon reservoir at its base that stores a nutrient solution, and a small pump. The pump pushes the nutrient solution up to the top of the Tower Garden, and from there the nutrient solution drips down and evenly cascades the nutrient solution over the plant roots. As the nutrient solution drips down the tower, it feeds the plants' roots and becomes highly oxygenated. This process is repeated on a continuous basis in order to provide oxygen, water, and nutrients to the roots of the plants.

Watch the following instructional video for a demonstration of how to prepare and plant seedlings in the Tower Garden Growing system.

For more on how aeroponics works, see here.

For more on setting up your Tower Garden system, see here.