One of the projects I’ve been really happy to collaborate on here at Ohio State is the “Pop Garden” outside of Smith Laboratory, where my office is located. A new club on campus named GrOSU designed the garden and planted it with amaranth, popcorn, millet, and sorghum–all crops that can be“popped” and eaten. We were also very lucky to receive a donation of Com-Til – a nutrient-rich compost made from yard and sanitation wastes – from the City of Columbus. So who fertilized the pop garden? If you live in Columbus, it just may have been you.

We hope to develop other garden projects throughout our Columbus campus (including Waterman Farm) as part of the Initiative for Food and Agricultural Transformation (InFACT) Discovery Theme at OSU. If you have ideas of projects you want to initiate, please feel free to contact me.