Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
Green Bronx Machine and Stephen Ritz - Our New PBS TV Show Featuring Leslie Ladybug And Tower Garden
This week we debut our friend Leslie Ladybug, who moves into a new Tower Garden home - Basil Towers - teaching all about seeds, vertical farming, healthy living, and growing food with children all year long - using 90% less water and 90% less space
I could not be more proud of Green Bronx Machine and our new series: Let's Learn debuting on PBS today. This series, designed to inspire healthy living, healthy learning, equity, empathy, compassion, and wellness features a series of diverse and inclusive characters right from our Bronx classroom!
This week we debut our friend Leslie Ladybug, who moves into a new Tower Garden home - Basil Towers - teaching all about seeds, vertical farming, healthy living, and growing food with children all year long - using 90% less water and 90% less space. Leslie teaches us that you too can grow food all year long and have fun doing it!
WATCH THE EPISODE NOW
AND SHARE IT!
And, you can find teacher and student resources to accompany all the fun and learning right on the GBM website.
We hope you'll tune in and share all the learning! Stay tuned to meet Patti the Pigeon, Sammy the Shark, Bobby the Bear, Sam the Squirrel, Artie the Ant, Mr. Met, and General Sequoia - the world's biggest tree - in weekly episodes coming soon!
With love from the Bronx, to the world, your pal,
Have You Thought About Growing Your Own Produce?
Have you thought about finally growing your own produce? Especially in times of uncertainty, I needed to know that I have access to healthy, nutritious, and flavorful produce all year long. My answer to this burning question came in the form of a Tower Garden. Have you heard of them yet?
By WALTRAUD UNGER
April 23, 2020
Zucchini and Zucchiniflowers growing on Waltraud's Tower Garden
Credits: Waltraud Unger
1 YOU CAN GROW YEAR-ROUND
Tower Gardens are a state-of-the-art vertical aeroponic growing system, allowing you to grow vegetables, herbs, and flowers in less time than it takes to grow in soil. Because they don’t require any soil you can grow plants anywhere. With the addition of sun-spectrum LED grow lights, it’s easy to have your garden indoors close to your kitchen or outside on the patio. Depending on the configuration you will be able to have up to 36 different plants at your fingertips. There is nothing better than picking fresh, beyond organic herbs right when you need them.
Health and transformation coach, Waltraud Unger, holding Swiss Chard harvested from her Tower Garden
Credits: Waltraud Unger
2. IT SAVES YOU MONEY QUICKLY
Have you ever gone produce shopping with the intention to prepare it within a few days and then had a change of plans? Days and weeks go by and you finally find a bag of wilted greens or rotten cauliflower hiding in the back of your refrigerator. Well, you are not alone! It’s not only costly to toss expensive produce, but it’s also aggravating to find a spoiled bag of herbs or produce when you finally want to use it
When I decided to buy my first Tower Garden, I saved enough money from buying expensive organic produce that my Tower Garden had paid for itself within six months. Now I not only get to eat fresh produce right off my tower, but I also save money.
Once the Tower Garden was paid for, I only needed to replace nutrients, seeds, and rock wool once or twice a year. The total yearly cost is less than my former monthly produce bill! I call the Tower Garden my “Giving Tree” as it keeps on giving me produce for next to nothing.
3. YOU CONTROL HOW YOUR PRODUCE IS GROWN AND HANDLED
I found that the plants in my Tower Garden are much healthier and stronger than the same plants in my organic garden beds. They also seem to be much less affected by bugs and diseases than their dirt growing siblings. There is hardly any need for pest or disease control. If I occasionally find some bugs on my plants, I can easily take them out of the towers and treat them organically without affecting the other plants. It gives me peace of mind that my family and I are the only ones handling the produce in my Tower Garden. I have full knowledge of who planted the seeds, cared for the plants, and harvested our food. I know exactly what came in contact with my food and what did not. I feel the same reassurance and comfort I did when growing up with my grandma’s vegetable garden right outside our kitchen door; this time just a little updated.
4. THE PRODUCE HAS MORE FLAVOR AND GROWS FASTER
I enjoy experimenting and often plant the same seeds in my Tower Garden as I do in my organic soil beds. The consensus from friends and family has been that the produce from my towers has more flavor than from my garden beds. It’s sad to admit, but true. All the hours and pain working the soil, pulling the weeds, and watering my crop doesn’t yield better produce.
The University of Mississippi did a scientific comparison of Tower Garden farming to conventional growing and found a much higher yield and more flavor in produce harvested from Tower Gardens. Check out this link to the research results. I can definitely agree with their findings.
5. IT USES LESS WATER THAN CONVENTIONAL OR ORGANIC FARMING
The Tower Garden is a closed system without soil. It uses aeroponic technology to deliver water and nutrients directly to the roots of the plants. There is hardly any evaporation or wasted water. Some tests at NASA show that you can save up to 98% of water with these towers. With water being such a precious resource, this is a wonderful ecological benefit as well as significant cost savings. Plus, it aligns with my sense of sustainable living!
If you are like me you will enjoy all the other cool and nerdy benefits of Tower Gardens. Check out these research-based benefits of growing your produce with a Tower Garden in this blog post.
6. KIDS EAT MORE PRODUCE IF THEY GROW IT THEMSELVES
Kids are naturally inquisitive and want to participate in whatever others are doing. Tower Gardens bring the farm to the child. They get to witness firsthand the life cycle of plants from planting seeds to growing healthy plants and harvesting food.
My children love to watch the seedlings grow and pick greens and herbs for their lunch sandwiches. They take on roles such as refilling the tank to care for the tower and harvest the plants we grow. In return, they can’t wait to eat their greens.
Waltraud Unger grew up learning from her mother and grandmother how to grow delicious organic food and embraced Tower Gardens a few years back when she struggled with growing her own organic produce on a shady suburban plot. Now she enjoys fresh and delicious produce all year long as she grows indoors as well as outdoors with her Tower Gardens.
Join her Inner Circle Tower Garden community to receive more information on tower Gardens, a planting guide, FAQs, and periodic informative updates and gardening inspiration.
History of The Tower Garden®
I applied for a patent on the Tower Garden on August 11, 2004. I also applied for the trademark “Tower Garden” at the same time. I was successful in selling the Tower Garden to the local market, mostly in Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson, SC
By urbanagnews
October 30, 2019
By Morris Bryan, Inventor of the Tower Garden
In 1974, I graduated from The Georgia Institute of Technology like the majority of the men in my family – my grandfather, father, two uncles, and three brothers – with a diploma I thought would change my life, but it wasn’t until that summer when I visited my mother in Athens, GA that I would stumble upon the beginnings of my true passion.
The very first Tower Garden in 1974
As we reminisced and she congratulated me on my hard-earned degree, I looked through her window into the backyard and saw flowers and vegetables growing out of concrete blocks and pipes and stacked terra cotta pots. Even though I had spent the past four years studying engineering, the landscape appeared entirely alien and almost mystical. My mother credited the growing systems behind her flourishing garden to her friend named Michael Dillon of Flowers, Inc.
Not long after, I met Michael at his nursery and our friendship sparked instantly. In addition to his innovative mind, I admired his foresight and the convictions that fueled his “towers.” Long before climate change and sustainability became a major global concern, Michael believed that the world was running out of usable land for crops and that future human survival depended on growing food differently or as he saw it, vertically. Together we made hydroponic towers from pots, concrete, used tires, garbage bins, and anything we found that we could stack and plant.
It’s important to note that while Michael introduced me to the concept of hydroponic growing, the practice itself was not new. However, what made Michael’s approach unique was the way he utilized existing structures as vessels and modified contemporary fertilizers by crushing them into extremely fine particles and put them into solution. He documented his nuanced approach to hydroponics within “The Dollars and Sense of Tower Gardening,” a text that became my lifeline to a new way of thinking about gardening. Michael passed away in 1987 but I would continue to carry the impact of our intellectual companionship and his vision for the rest of my life.
Although by that time tinkering with towers began to take on a smaller role in my life as I devoted myself to the family business of textiles, I never stopped growing and so too did the hydroponic industry. Companies like American Hydroponics, General hydroponics, and others evolved and released new and exciting growing systems and nutrient solutions that were ready-made for the consumer. The network of hydroponic engineers expanded internationally with the Dutch and Israeli markets leading the way. Hydroponic nutrient quality improved dramatically, and indoor gardening became popular thanks to the equally overwhelming rise in marijuana use.
My daughter picking tabasco peppers from a prototype in 2002
Amidst these swift and vast changes, my life continued to evolve as well. In 1991 my daughter Samantha was born and not long after we moved to Anderson, South Carolina after selling our family textile business. There, I began working on a new type of vertical gardening system and this product would become the Tower Garden as recognized today. Samantha was the creative catalyst I needed. She would wander into the garage to inspect my latest prototype, shake her head with the finicky disapproval of a preteen. I took these rejections, although playful, to heart and stayed focused on improving the Tower until I finally got a nod of her head. With the support of my family, it was then I knew the tower was ready for the market.
I applied for a patent on the Tower Garden on August 11, 2004. I also applied for the trademark “Tower Garden” at the same time. I was successful in selling the Tower Garden to the local market, mostly in Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson, SC. After selling a few hundred units, I enlisted Bloomington Wholesale Garden Supply or BWGS as the exclusive distributor of the Tower. They gave my invention great exposure and enabled me to participate in the indoor gardening expos held in San Francisco, Tampa, and other cities. It was there that I made many friends in the hydroponic industry and established valuable relationships that I still maintain today.
Shortly after I filed for my patent, J.B. Jones, my friend, fellow hydroponic enthusiast, and technology director at the Fayfard horticultural media company, took some information on the Tower to a seminar he planned to attend at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. When he returned, he informed me that a person from Disney was there and requested additional info on the Tower. That person was Tim Blank. It is important to note that I had filed my patent prior to Tim Blank having knowledge of the existence of the Tower Garden.
In late 2004, I sent a Tower to Tim at Disney World where it was displayed in the entrance to Epcot. This gave me a huge boost of confidence and faith in my idea that propelled me into the next few months as I continued to sell towers with BWGS and through my own personal efforts. I spent several weeks traveling throughout the South selling Tower Gardens to hydroponic retail stores and making numerous invaluable and lasting friendships that reminded me of my time with Mr. Dillon.
After almost 2 years from the 2004 filing date, the Tower Garden patent was issued to me on June 6th, 2006 (patent # 7,055,282).
The first Tower Garden order in 2005 from my distributor Bloomington Wholesale (left), and the our patent (right)
I did not hear from Tim for 2 years. Then, in early 2006, I received a phone call from Tim Blank, and he stated he had left Disney and had started a new company called Future Growing where he would be interested in being a distributor of the Tower. I agreed and Future Growing replaced BWGS as the exclusive selling agent for the Tower Garden. As is the case with most distributor/manufacturer relationships, Future Growing requested that changes be made to the Tower Garden, based on consumer feedback. Several modifications were made, and some were denied due to expense or feasibility. Future Growing continued to be the exclusive selling agent for the Tower Garden and was successful in generating sales and increasing the visibility of the Tower.
My beautiful wife Angela enjoying a Tower Garden in 2006
In 2010, I realized that for the Tower Garden to be a commercial success, I needed either a huge influx of capital or to sell the patent to an entity that could provide higher volume distribution channels than Future Growing was providing. By chance, Future Growing was introduced to the Juice Plus Company located in Collierville, TN and the sale of the patent occurred in 2011. I became the manufacturer of the Tower for Juice Plus at my facility in Anderson, SC and produced 30,000 units until they requested assistance to transfer the manufacturing to their own facility in Memphis, TN.
Now, with tens of thousands of distributors and an established place in the wellness industry, Juice Plus has been able to provide the critical mass necessary to carry the Tower Garden forward into the future driven by the same values that inspired its humble origins.
The long yet rewarding journey of the Tower Garden and the continued encouragement of my family and friends have stayed my inventive spirit and I have now received three additional patents on new hydroponic growing systems: The Solar Salad®, the Solar Salad®Pro series, and a modified Tower Garden for Juice Plus issued in February, 2019. In addition, I have continued to refine and develop the Tower with the additions of the Micropot, the grow clip, and the plastic dolly which I created and designed with Juice Plus.
US (FL): Aeroponic Tower Gardens Introduced to Student Learning Experience
By using aeroponic Tower Gardens created by LA Urban Farms, Gator Dining Services is exploring how to do food production in or around the dining halls
Urban agriculture can provide healthy, local food in more populated areas through home vegetable gardens, farmer’s markets, backyard poultry, and other production methods. This growing trend has extended to the University of Florida’s Gator Dining Services in a partnership with the Field & Fork Campus Food Program.
By using aeroponic Tower Gardens created by LA Urban Farms, Gator Dining Services is exploring how to do food production in or around the dining halls. The vertical towers pump water through the center to bathe plant roots as plants grow in small pots. The design is meant to be space, energy and water efficient. The towers were donated by LA Urban Farms, a Gator-owned business, to the Field & Fork Farm and Gardens for a class in the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) in spring 2018.
CALS student Garrett Noonan with the Field & Fork aeroponic tower at Gator Dining Services. (Tyler Jones, UF/IFAS)
“It’s using the campus as a living laboratory and collaborating with UF and industry partners,” said Anna Prizzia, director of Field & Fork. “We’re meeting an educational need while exploring the potential of a long-term project.”
Gator Dining Services visitors can see the aeroponic Tower Gardens now. Four towers are installed at the following locations: one at Fresh Food Company (near Broward Hall), one at Gator Corner Dining Center (near North Hall) and two at the Otis Hawkins Center near Pugh Hall. The herbs and leafy greens will be donated to the Alan and Cathy Hitchcock Field & Fork Pantry.
“Since this is a new project, we plan on seeing how the summer goes before making future plans,” said Kayla Caselli-Bido, sustainability manager for Gator Dining Services. “Growing food in the aeroponic towers exemplifies Gator Dining Services’ responsible sourcing and waste minimization pillars as part of our Green Thread sustainability platform.”
Before graduating in 2018 from CALS as an animal sciences major, Caselli-Bido interned with Field & Fork for a year and a half. Growing up in the suburbs of Miami, Florida, Caselli-Bido said her hands-on experience with agriculture came from the Field & Fork Campus Food Program. In addition to her internship, she took an Urban Agriculture and Food Systems experiential learning course based at the Field & Fork Farm and Gardens. These opportunities positioned her well for her current role at Gator Dining Services.
“Without Field & Fork, I would not have found my passion for agriculture and sustainability,” Caselli-Bido said.
The aeroponic towers project has provided an additional internship experience for a CALS student. Garrett Noonan, a senior plant science major, came to UF after serving 13 years in the U.S. Army.
“In my experiences in all the countries I visited, I saw how food security was used as a political weapon,” Noonan said. “This had a profound effect on me as a soldier. What I saw first-hand pushed me to choose this career path in sustainable crop production.”
As an intern with Field & Fork and Gator Dining Services, Noonan conducts basic maintenance on the aeroponic towers. His tasks include measuring the growth rate of plants, refilling the tower with water, checking for insects and collecting data to help Gator Dining Services assess the long-term viability of the towers.
“I’m most excited for the future that this project could bring as far as fundamentally changing the way we grow food,” Noonan said. “These kinds of innovations can change the landscape of agriculture.”