9-20-2020 8:17pm

Cross Creek Hyrdroponics Promotes Healthy Eating Habits

Rick Amburgey Neighbor

Tami Kincer has recently opened Cross Creek Hydroponics, which is located at 240 S. Main Street in Springboro. She said she started a ministry of growing healthy foods in the Appalachian region using indoor hydroponic methods. The focus was growing fruits and vegetables, but mostly mixed greens for families who live in food insecure households in food desert regions.

Kincer said she was a counselor for student ministry and served in a soup kitchen that also had a food pantry. She said there was a lot of produce that had been donated, but most people chose the canned and dry food. They started doing grow walls to introduce the youth to eating healthy.

Cross Creek Hydroponics supports the nonprofit by helping instruct people how to grow indoors year round whether it is for their own family, community outreach or schools. The space in Springboro is very small, but there are some grow walls in there so people can see how it operates and get some ideas about how it can be developed for their use. "We just help people take small spaces and turn them into indoor year-round gardens and/or small farms," Kincer said.

According to Kincer, hydroponics is very attractive to people who have grants and foundations. "There's a great amount of funds available out there to support this kind of technology," she said, adding that there is a greater chance to get a grant to do a project with hydroponics than to fund a community garden project at a school.

Kincer said she has talked to local schools and she has been getting email from others who have heard about what she is doing. She said The Dayton Foundation has recently given a grant to do two vertical garden walls in a school in Vandalia. She said they are going to be installing it soon. "In one area, we are going to be installing eight towers and they are going to be growing some mixed greens," she said, adding that the school is right next door to Vandalia's food pantry. Kincer said that people from Springboro Schools have been in to see what they are doing. She said they are in beginning talks about what we can do in Springboro.

Kincer said that it is going to be necessary for the next generation to be self-suficient. "There's a lot of skill that's gained by gardening," she said. Before starting to work with hydroponics, Kincer was an engineer. "This is God-led for me....I never dreamt that I would be spearheading something like this," she said.

Kincer said that hydroponics is not the same thing as growing vegetables in hothouses. She said hothouses use chemicals in the water. She said Sun Gold Tomatoes is one company that uses hydroponically grown food.

The benefits of hydroponics is allowing fruits and vegetables to be grown year round and grown in areas that are often considered food desert regions, or areas where things don't grow easily. Eating healthier food can improve physical and emotional health. "Eating healthy creates such amazing brain power," she said. Kincer said eating foods that are not as healthy can lead to obesity and childhood diabetes, as well as cause people to have anxiety and depression. "If you are upset all the time or feeling agitated all the time, you will eventually get depressed, she said.