Organic growing at ASU is taking root.
After spending months preparing the soil of a plot in the northeast corner of the Secret Garden between Dixie Gammage and West halls, students in the Edible Campus internship began planting seeds a few weeks ago.
"We've got some seedlings sprouting," said intern and plant biology junior Anne Barber. "It's pretty exciting."
On Monday, Barber and fellow intern Lana Idriss watered their carrot seedlings and some unsold spring flowers Idriss received from an organic farmer in Scottsdale who works with the interns.
"We saved these from the grocery stores," Idriss said.
She said the experience has been educational.
"I'm starting to understand now how things work," said Idriss, an architecture and landscape architecture senior. "That's really changed the way I design things now and the way I'll create landscapes from now on."
The four students in the program, offered for the first time this semester through the School of Life Sciences, have also saved about 4,000 pounds of sour Seville oranges from landfills, Idriss said.
For the last few months, the students have been picking the sour oranges from trees all over campus.
"A lot of the students were so out of the loop and didn't know what we were doing," Idriss said about the harvesting project. "[The program] helps us learn and creates an awareness on the campus, too."
Though Idriss said many people believe the oranges on campus are simply ornamental, they can be useful and are edible. This year's harvest was donated to a primate foundation in Mesa. ARAMARK, ASU's meal provider, is also working to create dishes that incorporate the fruit, Idriss said.
Barber said she and other students also found recipes for orangeade and marmalade that use the sour oranges. Barber said using food grown on campus is the first step in making ASU self-supportive — a long-term goal of hers.
"Campuses are kind of like their own city," Barber said. "We can support ourselves and reduce our carbon footprint."
Putting rhetoric about sustainability into a hands-on program is a goal of the internship, said coordinator Randy Hanson.
"Sustainability is not just a way to get grants or bring publicity to a university," Hanson said. "Hopefully it can be transformed into concerted actions."
Hanson said students, who are learning practical lessons about growing organically, drive the internship. Ideally, the internship will expand its influence until all food at ASU is organic and locally grown, like the food at Yale and the University of Oregon, Hanson said.
Though agriculture has existed for tens of thousands of years, Hanson said people in modern cultures are disconnected from the food they eat.
"Most people think food comes between plastic and Styrofoam or from a fast-food window," Hanson said.
Along with teaching students practical lessons about gardening, Hanson said the program educates students about the connection between the choices they make about food and environmentalism.
"This younger generation is pushing established institutions like ASU to walk the walk and talk the talk," Hanson said.
Reach the reporter at: claudia.koerner@asu.edu.
