Photo: Rachel Glass
My mom and I have really been expanding our gardening knowledge lately. Though there is a lot more to learn, we have been sharing that gardening knowledge with kids and families in our community.
When we were asked to teach children at a special event sponsored by the AUA (Advocates for Urban Agriculture) and Hull House, we decided to teach a workshop on making SIPs. A SIP is a Sub Irrigated Planter. Sub meaning bottom, irrigated meaning watered, and planter meaning… well you know. So a SIP is a planter watered from the bottom.
“First the water at the bottom of the SIP is wicked or sucked up by the fabric. Then, the water comes in contact with the roots and the plant drinks the water,” I explained.
Photo: Rachel Glass
After teaching the Becker girls (above) how to make SIPs I took a quick break. When I came back to the room from my break, I found out one of the girls had taught an adult how to make a SIP all by herself!
My mom and I invented the seed match game so people could learn what seeds go to which plants.
The Becker girls extraordinarily (unlike some other kids I’ve taught) seemed to want to learn more about gardening. I knew that because when I introduced them to the seed game they enthusiastically started to match the seeds with the pictures of plants.
After the kids constructed their SIPs, we gave them chocolate mint seedlings to plant in their new homemade planters.
Not long after teaching kids how to make 2-liter SIPs, we taught more children to make SIPs. In this case we taught our Girl Scout troop.
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Little Green Girl
SIP Instructions updated: 3.17.2012
SIP Instructions updated: 3.17.2012
