In 2018, Tuctronics started working with the Athena-Weston school district in Athena, Oregon, to teach middle and high school students about agriculture. The goal: to enable them to take care of the school’s plants better. The program started with CEO and engineer Jeff Tucker’s hands-on demonstration of an automated irrigation system for the school’s greenhouse. He taught them about irrigation tube installation, choosing the best emitter for their watering type, and electronic irrigation equipment. After the initial workshop, there were two follow-up lessons on general horticulture.
“It’s really fun to connect tubes together to water your near-dead plants. When I got there, a lot of the plants were in pretty bad shape,” Jeff remembers. “I helped the students learn how to build their own systems and save a lot of their plants. The kids loved it.”
As part of Tuctronics’ ongoing support for the program, Jeff has regular meetings with their plant science teacher, Ashley Tompkins, to discuss more advanced programming for the irrigation equipment.