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Iceland’s harsh climate limits the number of harvestable cultivars that can be grown outdoors. While Icelandic heated greenhouses enable a larger variety of crops to be grown, their upkeep is labor and resource intensive, and the associated costs can be prohibitive. Professor Robert Dell, Director of the Laboratory for Energy Reclamation and Innovation (LERI) at the Cooper Union has developed an intensive cascade utilization system using waste steam condensate and hot water as a working fluid that creates an outdoor shallow network of plastic pipes for heating garden soil. This research and development, which began in 2007 in New York City and 2009 in Iceland, compares plant growth between heated and control gardens. Previous studies’ test beds used municipal district heated wastewater, waste fluid from a geothermal heated swimming pool, and waste hot water from a traditional heated greenhouse. This paper analyzes the results of enhanced outdoor crop production using a new small-scale, high yield garden from the 2019 growing season at the Agricultural University of Iceland (Landbúnaðarháskóli Islands). The plants studied include turnips, zucchinis, tomatoes, oregano, and a variety of peppers. A plant growth index was developed for analytical purposes. It takes the weighted average of measurements of plant height and the two widest stem spread diameters to quantify growth before the harvest. The plants in heated gardens grew approximately 45% taller and wider on average than those in unheated beds. |
