Hydroponics Series

Hydroponics is a cultivation method where you can grow plants without the use of soil. This four-week course (October 5, 12, 19, and 26) is geared toward those individuals with a little experience in horticulture and/or hydroponics and whose main interest is in growing indoors during the fall/winter.

Participants will:

• Build a hydroponics system
• Learn how to grow leafy greens in hydroponics
• Learn about Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Entomology
• Learn about nutrient and lighting requirements for plants

Dates: Wednesdays, October 5, 12, 19, and 26, 2022, at 6pm

The course fee includes all supplies. Please note that classes cannot be purchased individually; the series is meant to be taken as a whole.

Instructor: Nadia Ruffin, MS
Assistant Instructor: Chandler Glover

About Nadia Ruffin

Nadia Ruffin, MS has over 20 years of experience in the agriculture industry. She is the owner of Quiwi Produce and founder of Agricademy Inc. She graduated from Ohio State in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in Agriculture where she majored in Animal Sciences/minored in Entomology. She has a background in veterinary medicine and research. She has held positions at the Ohio State University, The Ohio Department of Agriculture, University of Cincinnati, and Georgia. She was also a disease investigator for four years at Hamilton County Public Health. Besides her experience in veterinary medicine and research her family has owned a flower shop for over 30 years called Blossoms Florist in Cincinnati, Ohio area. She is very skilled at growing plants in soil as well as using hydroponics/aquaponics indoors and teaching these methods to others. Aside from her growing skills she has years of knowledge in entomology. She received her Master of Science in Entomology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2017. She published articles each month for an online magazine called The Dirt on Organic Gardening from 2015-2017 and she has also published articles for Rodale.

Nadia received a resolution from Cincinnati City Council in February 2018 for her farming and agriculture initiatives. Nadia also received an award from the National Black Farmers Association as the farmer of the year in 2017 for teaching new advanced technologies in farming to black farmers (new, beginning and experienced). In 2018 Nadia accepted a position with the National Black Farmers’ Association as the Project Director for the project “We Grow Farmers.” In this position she was responsible for overseeing recruiting farmers and creating workshops. The project reached ~10,000 community members via workshops, conferences, mailings, website, social media and website advertisements. In 2019 Nadia received a SARE Farmer Rancher Grant to conduct an entomological study on Honeybees titled “The use of Bacillus thuringiensis spp. Inside beehives to control Small Hive Beetles (Aethina tumida) and Wax Moths.” Some other current projects she is working on through Agricademy Inc. are: Agriplorers Program- The program teaches youth grades 5^th-12^th about the agriculture industry and career/entrepreneurship options they can pursue. Black Empowerment Through Agriculture – a program funded by the United Way of Greater Cincinnati (Funded 2020-Present) -The program focused on showing enrollees how to start small scale farming operations and other agribusinesses.