Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
Ikea Creates Sustainable Indoor Garden To Help You Grow Veggies Triple Fast
Ikea Creates Sustainable Indoor Garden To Help You Grow Veggies Triple Fast
Posted by Jill Ettinger | Senior Editor, LIVEKINDLY | Featured in VegNews, The Huffington Post, MTV, Reality Sandwich, EcoSalon, and Organic Authority.
Los Angeles, CA | Contactable via jill@livekindly.co
Jan 2, 2018
Ikea may have just made your life easier. No, really. While you’ll still need to find your mini toolset and have some alcohol nearby to console you as you build away into the night, this one’s actually a game-changer, even if you never thought you could have an indoor garden.
Space10, the design lab for Swedish furniture giant Ikea, has just revolutionized the home garden. In particular, it’s targeting homes without a spoonful of soil anywhere on the property. And it’s just what you’d expect from the modern and DIY-focused home furnishings store and then some.
Earlier this year at the September London Design Festival, Ikea revealed a prototype for Lokal, its mini indoor garden that can grow herbs and fresh greens inside your home in Ikea’s uniquely compact and edgy style. No sunlight? No problem. It takes a futuristic slant on the kitchen garden–a bit of a science and a bit of sci-fi all wrapped in one delicious salad grower that can grow food pretty much anywhere there’s a power outlet.
The idea is to “explore how Ikea could develop a new, local supply chain for its own food,” Space10 spokesperson Simon Caspersen told Business Insider.
The indoor farming system relies on hydroponics (water) and LED lights in a climate-controlled box. The LED lights mimic natural sunlight but can actually increase production with crops growing three times as fast as they would outdoors, Ikea claims. And that speedy growth means the system requires 90 percent less water than required by outdoor (or soil-based indoor) gardens, making it super sustainable for growing greens and herbs.
And these gardens full of healthy food are sure to sell out, because, as anyone who’s ever put together Ikea furniture knows, you need to be healthy, strong, and energized to do it.
This Stylish Table Is the “Next Generation” of Automated Urban Farming
One of the more promising urban-farm concepts is not in New York, Los Angeles, or any other major city. It’s in Charlottesville, Virginia, courtesy of one University of Virginia alum and a very small team of employees.
This Stylish Table Is the “Next Generation” of Automated Urban Farming
By Jennifer Marston December 29, 2017
One of the more promising urban-farm concepts is not in New York, Los Angeles, or any other major city. It’s in Charlottesville, Virginia, courtesy of one University of Virginia alum and a very small team of employees.
Recent grad Alexander Olsen started Babylon Micro-Farms in 2016, as part of the UVA student entrepreneurial clubhouse, HackCville. An early prototype won $6,500 from Green Initiatives Funding Tomorrow, part of the UVA student council.
Now, Olsen and six other employees are working to get the hydroponic farms inside the homes of consumers, billing them as “the next generation home appliance.”
The concept is pretty straightforward. You start by selecting crops from Babylon’s online menu. Pre-seeded plant packs are then delivered to your door. Right now, pod pack choices include: wellness (kale), spicy peppers, pesto, a mini romaine crop, herbs, edible flowers, a cocktail mix, Asian greens, and arugula.
Once seed pods are set up, the farm regulates itself—you may occasionally have to top off the water or nutrients, but otherwise, the process is automated. A corresponding app provides live data about crop health, notifies users when water and nutrients are needed, and tells you when it’s time to harvest your crops. Once the latter is done, you can order another round of crops and start the process all over again. For the extra-ambitious (and restaurants), the app can control multiple farms at once.
One thing setting Babylon Mirco-Farms apart from other urban farming products is its emphasis on visual design. To that end, the system takes the form of a table with a UV light hanging overhead and is small compared to its industrial counterparts: 6 feet wide by 3 feet deep and 6 feet tall. And instead of seeing wires and buttons, everywhere, pinewood hides those operational things and makes the farm as much a stylish conversation piece as it is a food supply.
The company isn’t alone in their mission to marry urban farming with, uh, urban style. The Ava Byte also uses soil-less grow pods, which come in a slick, space-age-looking container that would blend into a lot of modern kitchen designs. Verdical calls itself “a living food appliance” and is also small enough to fit into most homes. Farmshelf is more geared at serving restaurants and retail spaces, but as of November, they were considering a move to more residential markets.
UVA has given Olsen and Co. considerable support for the project, from grants to advice about the next phase of business. Farms are also installed at university dining halls, where students are encouraged to harvest what they need. According to Olsen, the farms are “a massive hit” amongst the students.
Babylon is now focused on bringing the farms to consumers outside of universities. Currently, a the micro-farm farm goes for $1,799. Pre-order one here. East Coasters get free shipping.
The company also wants to eventually offer a smaller system for less than $1,000, which would be a hit for both cost-conscious consumers and those of us living in shoebox-sized apartments. Neither price tag is pocket change, but I suspect with the right amount of dedication, an investment in one of these would pay for itself pretty fast. Stay tuned.
Photo credit: Dan Addison, University Communications, UVA
SproutsIO
SproutsIO
SproutsIO is another tech company looking to make food more personal. The compact smart microgarden system lives in your home and includes everything you need to grow fresh produce year round without the mess of soil.
The SproutsIO device features a high efficiency LED lamp head, a basin that combines hydroponic and aeroponic technologies, and sensors that monitor both the environment and the plant’s health. The type of light and its duration is automatically determined by the type of produce you are growing, as is the irrigation schedule, and the data from the sensors is used to continuously update the system as needed.
The seeds themselves are contained in easy-to-switch-out sIO refills, and users can order from amongst the 16 types available on the company’s website. The SproutsIO app gives the grower the opportunity to personalized the flavor of their produce through tweaks to its growing environment, too, so not only are they growing produce in their home, they’re growing produce they know they’ll enjoy eating.
Bringing Sustainable Farming Home
Bringing Sustainable Farming Home
I say farming, you say “Midwest”. It’s no secret that the Midwest, and Indiana in particular, serve as the agricultural epicenter for the United States.
Indiana is also home to Purdue University, a school who’s agricultural and technology programs serve as cornerstones for the institution. It is only fitting then that their students are behind Hydro Grow: an innovative blend of farming and technology that ushers in new-age growing.
Hydro Grow has created a commercialized hydroponic grow tank that is designed to fit seamlessly into the average home. This tank can be customized to grow the produce desired by the consumer, directly impacting the supply/demand chain of food production. Rather than settling for the produce items that are in season, or wasting money and soil on vegetables that no one will buy, Hydro Grow’s Gropod generates a tailored harvest.
In one of their most recent iterations, the Hydro Grow team has further integrated technology into the pod, equipping it with advanced analytics capabilities. Using complex algorithms, the pod will identify what plants are growing within and tailor the environment to maximize growth, making real-time adjustments based on the data stream. A mobile application allows remote monitoring, adjustments, cleaning and alerts to reach the user no matter when and no matter where.
This innovative approach to farming not only allows a family to have a tailored produce selection but contributes to the overall sustainability initiative. The ability to shrink and mass produce a practical solution to hunger has wide-ranging implications for a variety of global issues, including world hunger. It allows plants to find a nurturing environment in even the harshest of climates.
Connected farming is just one of the many ways IoT is disrupting established industries. Learn more at our IndyIoT Conference!
Clare Maher
Clare Maher is the Product Marketing Manager at ClearObject. A graduate of Saint Mary’s College (#gobelles), Clare can usually be found yelling at the screen during a Notre Dame game, quoting any film ever made or touring the Indy restaurant scene.
Made-in-Toronto Devices Aim to Make Indoor Gardening Simple
Aamar Khwaja is the founder of Modgarden, a modular indoor farming system, and his mission is to enable people to produce enough food to yield a salad a day.
Modgarden founder Aamar Khwaja | Samuel Engelking
One of the joys of summer is stepping out into the backyard or balcony and snipping a few leaves of fresh herbs or greens and adding them to dinner. Then winter comes and destroys all of the plant-growing fun.
But if one local entrepreneur has his way, city-dwellers will be growing healthy food year-round in their homes.
Aamar Khwaja is the founder of Modgarden, a modular indoor farming system, and his mission is to enable people to produce enough food to yield a salad a day.
The Modgarden was born out of Khwaja’s own personal need. After decades on Wall Street, he was chronically sick. When changing his diet resulted in improved health, he decided to grow his own food, which seemed impossible in his Toronto home.
“The food system is broken,” says Khwaja. “Any food can be labelled natural but still be sprayed with pesticides. I wanted to change that. After staring at a wall in my kitchen I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to grow something there?’”
He began researching urban farming and vertical gardening and struck upon the idea of creating his own system, which uses mineral-rich living soil and is app-enabled.
Khwaja enlisted Toronto-based sustainable architect Heather Dubbeldam, whose firm is designing a rooftop farm for a client that includes an orchard.
The Modgarden is smooth and sleek, more like a fetching piece of furniture than a productive garden. With three sizes, ranging from desktop to floor model, all of which are stackable, it has flexibility to fit small spaces. He already has a great deal of interest and expects the units to be on the market in mid-2018. Prices range from $799 to $1,199 (though pre-launch online discounts are $450-$750).
The Modgarden is part of a growing movement catering to indoor food production, one driven by health consciousness and sustainability.
Food-oriented products already on the market are typically hydroponic and range from small objects to large, custom builds. For smaller spaces, there are systems like Click & Grow, which comes in three tabletop sizes with stylish light arms, as well as two wall farm units. Miracle-Gro offers a system called Aerogarden.
The Urban Cultivator is akin to a wine fridge and installed under a counter in place of cabinets. Even IKEA has an indoor gardening system, Krydda/Växer, though it’s not yet available in Canada.
Then there are aquaponics systems, like HiGarden or Grove, which incorporate fish and wetlands to make self-sustaining, closed ecosystems. Water from the fish tank is fed up to the plants and then filters from the plants through a wetland layer for purification before returning to the tank.
At a glance, these devices appear complicated. But as Leon Wasser, VP of business development for Toronto-based HiGarden, says, “All you need to add is air and fish food.”
HiGarden’s VIGA systems range from a mini tabletop and 12- and 24-inch desktop models, to those designed for building lobbies and indoor community farms. (Prices for consumer models run from $499 to $1,119.)
HiGarden founder, Phil Fung, is a leading LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) advisor, so his approach includes improving the sustainability of buildings.
HiGarden founder Phil Fung | Courtesy of HiGarden
While HiGarden’s ambitions include working with schools, long-term-care facilities and northern Canadian food deserts, the company is also conscious of growing consumer demand.
“Younger people in condos don’t have easy access to green space,” says Wasser. “This is something that could be transformative – bringing a [garden] oasis into your home can be really beneficial, health-wise.”
So far, most home-sized systems are best suited for microgreens, leafy greens, small vegetables, peas, beans and herbs.
Of course, when people think of growing herbs indoors, a different variety comes to mind.
With federal legislation legalizing marijuana, including growing at home, coming in July 2018, that other herb is on the radars of Modgarden and HiGarden.
HiGarden has already designed a four-pot prototype of the VIGA in anticipation of the four-plant growing limit the law will allow, but beyond that, no modifications have been made, largely because weed is still illegal.
The challenge with retrofitting existing units is that while you don’t need to lock up basil, you’ll want to keep cannabis away from kids. Security and sufficient airflow – not to mention the fact that marijuana is notoriously finicky to keep alive – are chief concerns.
Khwaja is researching modifications for Modgarden but says that, for the moment anyway, his focus is on “feeding people.”
To date, only a few growing units are purpose-built for pot and are still in prototype or early-market stages – or sold out.
Grobo, developed in Waterloo, is a tall, discreet growing box that would look lovely in a living room and boasts security features like a locking door, fluid glass to mask contents, and air filtration. And WeeGro, used by licensed medical marijuana growers, is also customizable to allow users to disguise or display as desired.
Whether growing herbs or herb, the demand is strong and consumers primarily want simplicity.
“If it’s easy, they’ll do it,” says Heather Dubbeldam. “If it’s complicated, they won’t.”
If Randy Rowe’s experience is any indication, consumer demand for cannabis-centric systems is high.
He’s the president of Grow Up Cannabis Conference & Expo, which had its inaugural show in October in Niagara Falls. It drew around 4,000 people, many of whom were interested in growing their own.
Rowe says anyone who comes out with a consumer product that can grow everything in one box will hit the mark.
“That said, growing marijuana is an art. To be able to grow your own is hard,” he says. “It’s why you don’t see people growing their own tobacco.”
Back at Modgarden, Khwaja is finalizing the product for a spring 2018 launch.
“This is the appliance of the future,” he says, before comparing it to a fool-proof (if less sustainable) kitchen gadget. “I see this as the Keurig of fresh salads.”
IKEA Debuts Farm That Can Grow in Your Kitchen
The prototype known as Lokal, uses a hydroponic farming system that allows crops to grow on trays under LED light in a climate-controlled box.
IKEA Debuts Farm That Can Grow in Your Kitchen
BUSINESS REPORT / 9 OCTOBER 2017, 4:30PM / STAFF REPORTER
Image: Indoor Growing Kits & Cultivators by IKEA ( IKEA)
ONDON - The home furnishings retailer IKEA is now experimenting with products that allow people to harvest food at home.
Space10, Ikea's innovation lab, has designed a prototype of a mini-farm that can grow greens and herbs indoors.
The prototype known as Lokal, uses a hydroponic farming system that allows crops to grow on trays under LED light in a climate-controlled box.
Space10 debuted the device in September at the London Design Festival in Shoreditch.
Crops grow under LEDs instead of relying on natural sunlight.
Accordinng to the Space10 team, this process allows the greens to grow approximately three times quicker than in an outdoor garden.
The Space10 team estimates that Lokol uses 90% less water than a traditional garden to produce the same amount of greens, since the crops grow at a faster rate.
Space10 gave 2,000 free samples of Lokal microgreens to London Design Week attendees.
The purpose was to see how Londoners felt about Ikea's experiment and food grown hydroponically in general. In a press release, the team said they were optimistic about the project.
The Space10 team is now working on adding sensors to the growing trays, so that users can track how the greens grow using Google Home.
Using machine learning, the sensor system could allow gardeners to learn how to improve the growing process.
Sky High Veggies? Urban Farming Grows in Unexpected Places
CalSTRS Executive Chef Conrad Caguimbal offers a salad with roasted vegetables from the pension fund’s edible garden featured every day in the CalSTRS cafeteria in West Sacramento. Renée C. Byer rbyer@sacbee.com
Sky High Veggies? Urban Farming Grows in Unexpected Places
BY DEBBIE ARRINGTON | darrington@sacbee.com
OCTOBER 13, 2017 2:00 PM
Fresh vegetables and herbs, harvested steps away from the kitchen; that’s a chef’s dream.
In the Farm-to-Fork Capital, it’s also a sign that a business has thoroughly bought into an ethos of sustainability. Grow tomatoes at your doorstep – or on your roof – and patrons know those veggies are as local as they can get. So do employees who like to know their food source is just outside their windows.
Popping up throughout California are statement-making gardens full of food. That includes the landscaping at the front entrance of West Sacramento’s CalSTRS building, home to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.
“Most people grow landscaping as an afterthought,” said Lara Hermanson, the gardener/farmer behind Farmscape, which created the CalSTRS “Waterfront Gardens.” “They put in some shrubs and lawn, then forget about it. Food is much more interesting.
Farmscape, the largest urban farming company on the West Coast, has created more than 700 edible gardens in unexpected places.
“We do anything from a couple of raised beds to giant rooftop projects,” said Hermanson, who started growing food as landscaping for wealthy families in Malibu who wanted “kitchen gardens” without the gardening part.
As part of its contracts, Farmscape provides regular maintenance as well as original plans and setup. Packages start at $79 a week for 125 square feet; consultations start at $90 an hour. That’s expensive for a residential vegetable garden, but more reasonable for business or public projects – especially for such high-profile landscaping such as at the entrance of a major building.
Businesses may want to grow edible landscaping, but have no clue how to do it, Hermanson noted. Farmscape takes care of everything from planning to planting to harvest. Adding color and beauty, seasonal flowers, herbs and ornamental plants are mixed in with the vegetables, so the beds appear manicured and attractive year round.
Besides looking good, these gardens have an immediate dividend: Fresh organic food.
“That’s what people love,” Hermanson said.
Farmscape’s most famous “farms” are on top of Levi’s Stadium, the Santa Clara home to the 49ers, and under the scoreboard at the Giants’ AT&T Park in San Francisco.
Featuring espaliered fruit trees as well as annual vegetables, the Giants’ garden had a better summer than the team.
“Produce from that garden is used in three little cafes (at the ballpark) that feature wood-fired pizza including gluten-free options,” Hermanson said. “They also offer vegan options for folks who don’t do baseball food.”
A short throw from the bullpen, hydroponic towers sprout berries and greens used in ballpark smoothies and salads.
“It’s kind of an idea garden,” Hermanson said. “During games, 40,000 people can see how good it looks and think about growing food, too.”
Dubbed “Faithful Farm,” the rooftop garden at Levi’s Stadium supplies fresh produce to the venue’s food service. It looks like a typical vegetable garden – except the soil is only 6 to 9 inches deep and it sits nine stories above the ground.
“We had a crazy good summer at Levi’s,” Hermanson said. “We harvested 5,000 pounds of food from a 6,000-square-foot space. We had a thousand pounds of just melons! We grew so many peppers, we harvested 100 pounds a week.”
Among the challenges of farming on the roof: It gets really windy (but so does AT&T Park) and it’s less protected from rain and sun.
“Everything is more intense on the roof,” Hermanson said. “We had trouble with all that rain (last winter). The little lettuce just rot; it wouldn’t grow. On Christmas Eve, we had another huge storm. And the wind!
“(In summer and early fall), it gets so hot up there, everything just gets cooked,” she added. “But we’re getting to know what works up there.”
On the banks of the Sacramento River, the CalSTRS garden is much more hospitable. Originally planted two years ago, it has 10 raised beds plus more than a dozen fruit trees. It’s also been prolific; this summer, it produced 2-1/2 pounds of food per square inch.
Executive chef Conrad Caguimbal, who oversees CalSTRS’s busy cafe, enjoys growing vegetables and herbs for cafe meals. Open to the public, the cafe serves about 700 meals a day.
“I love the fact I can actually harvest my own produce, take it to the cafe and create something delicious,” Caguimbal said, “and I never get my hands dirty.”
Each week day, he creates an “Earth Bowl,” featuring fresh selections from the garden that sits just outside the cafe’s patio. Using veggies picked that morning, a recent bowl mixed together kale, zucchini and caramelized carrots with barley for a vegan entree.
“A lot of people get excited when we harvest,” he said. “They’ve been watching those tomatoes and squash grow, too.”
CalSTRS chose edible landscaping because it fits with its overall sustainability initiative, explained Madeline O’Connell, the facility’s environmental sustainability specialist. For example, the LEED-certified building recycles 40 tons of organic waste per month to make energy. (That includes waste from the garden.)
“We also use the garden for educational events,” O’Connell said. “After all, we serve teachers.”
Hermanson loves the CalSTRS garden, in part because of its location. It welcomes the building’s 1,100 workers as well as visitors and passersby.
“It’s really fun,” Hermanson said. “It’s right on the river walk. People take lunchtime rambles and stop by the garden. When we’re out there, we get a lot of questions. Is this real? Where does the produce go? (Visitors) interact – and that’s exactly the idea.”
Debbie Arrington: 916-321-1075, @debarrington
Conrad Caguimbal, executive chef at CalSTRS in West Sacramento, builds a salad from vegetables he gathered in the agency’s new edible garden. It’s on the daily menu at the CalSTRS cafeteria. Renée C. Byer rbyer@sacbee.com
“There Are a Lot of Palm Pilots Out There But No iPhones Yet In Consumer Indoor Farms” – Verdical CEO
Verdical produces an indoor, hydroponic growing tower intended for restaurants. Prototype growing systems are in use in three Bay Area restaurants and Deitz sees the system as a no-brainer for any restaurant, space or institution that wants to communicate local food values.
“There Are a Lot of Palm Pilots Out There But No iPhones Yet In Consumer Indoor Farms” – Verdical CEO
Andrew Deitz has been in Silicon Valley since the late 1990s. He spent nearly a decade at Climate Earth, a consultancy that helps big companies understand their carbon footprint and how decreasing it might help their bottom line. In September, he took the helm at consumer-focused indoor farming group Verdical.
Verdical produces an indoor, hydroponic growing tower intended for restaurants. Prototype growing systems are in use in three Bay Area restaurants and Deitz sees the system as a no-brainer for any restaurant, space or institution that wants to communicate local food values.
But the category of on-site growing — systems deployed to serve the needs of consumers at home or in restaurants — has been slow to get funding. According to AgFunder data, only four consumer grow systems companies raised funding in the first half of 2017. We caught up with Deitz to find out how he plans to grow Verdical in this nascent category.
Can you describe the Verdical growing system?
It’s a vertical tower that has openings for seed pods – we call them growing zones. You insert your seed pod into a growing zone. You wait, depending on what you’re growing: microgreens take 3 weeks, herbs take 8-12 weeks and you enjoy the pleasure of harvesting and eating.
Will there eventually have to be partnerships with major appliance manufacturers for these on-site farms? What does Verdical look like five years from now?
I think that consumers are changing and a living food appliance can be an important contribution to the kitchen. For Verdical, I think there are a bunch of paths to market.
Andrew Deitz
I see the B2B market as most interesting. The B2B market is about an experience. If you think about cafeterias and restaurants, there is ample space in those places to create a different experience for their customers. I think that their ability to articulate their values is a challenge. What is sustainability? What is fresh? What is local? These are all kind of nebulous words these days. One of our customers talks about what we’re doing for him as a statement of his values. His patrons can see their food, in this case just basil, going from three steps away to someone cutting it and putting it on their pizza.
He happens to do everything else right too – he treats his employees right, he sources well, he takes good care of his supply chain and his partners – but he had no way of communicating that and he didn’t want to bang customers over the head.
What do you think is going to be the deciding factor on which small-scale growing unit gains market share?
I think that it is about [user] experience. If you do it in a warehouse 50 miles away, people are not directly connected to their food. It’s also important to understand that there are very different price points in food. Lettuces and leafy greens are a tougher commodity business, and then there are higher end micro greens and herbs that might be a better starting spot because they’re more expensive and delicate.
So it will come down to the efficacy of the system? It has to be so easy to use, the user can’t mess up?
Yes, that’s the experience side. I think we’ve nailed the experience. I think there are a lot of palm pilots out there, but no one has made the iPhone yet.
People are getting ahead of their ski tips on ‘we grow plants faster. We grow them bigger – bigger yields.’ There is a danger that the consumer gets confused and they get so wrapped up in the yield, they lose sight that this is experiential.
And on the other side, it has to be cost-competitive because you’re still going to compete with the field and whatever basil costs. Organic basil sits at around $18-20 per pound. So you have to still get near that price point. But I think people will buy it because it’s pretty and for the experience, and I think companies can make money because it is a consumable and there is an opportunity for people who use it on a high scale. I think a lot of the home products are novelty and hobbyist.
Your New Indoor garden Could Be A Tree -- A Living Farming Tree, That Is
Your New Indoor garden Could Be A Tree -- A Living Farming Tree, That Is
Derek Markham (@derekmarkham)
Living / Green Food
October 3, 2017
This aeroponic indoor gardening system from the Italian startup Hexagro is modular, scalable, and automated.
In a bid to help make growing some of your own food at home as easy as possible, without needing prior experience or a green thumb, the latest urban gardening product employs LED lights, a suite of sensors, and an automated aeroponics system to keep maintenance (read: gardening) time to a minimum. There are a number of other indoor and countertop grow units on the market, all of which make similar claims, but what seems to set the Hexagro Living Farming Tree apart is its modular nature, which lends itself well to not only customization, but also to scaling up the size of this vertical gardening system.
The Living Farming Tree uses aeroponics, a soil-less growing method that uses a mist of water and nutrients to feed the plants' roots, which is claimed to use up to 95% less water than conventional soil-based agriculture, while also speeding up growth. The basic setup has four growing modules, each of which can hold 6 plant pots, sitting on a framework consisting of a system of tubes and what the company calls "global connectors" that look like they go together like Tinkertoys. An irrigation network is then threaded throughout the tubing, and LED lighting is connected to the upper section of the framework, which together supply light, water, and nutrients to the plants via an automated control system.
According to the company, as many as 13 growing modules can be connected as a single unit, for a total of 78 plants, making it possible to grow more produce in a small physical footprint than a traditional garden bed. This planting density would allow homes, offices, restaurants, and more to have easy access to some freshly grown foods without taking up a lot of space, and the ability to customize its structure to grow different sized plants could make it a more versatile machine than just lettuce and microgreens, which tend to be the staples of indoor gardening systems.
"The modularity of our system lets you produce any plant you want as long as it can be grown aeroponically. I’m sorry, this means you cannot plant a cherry tree there. However, you can go from micro-greens and sprouts up to aromatic herbs, salads, leafy greens and berries. If you want to produce higher plants, you will just need to configure the system in its 2D configuration, and you will immediately be able to produce plants such as tomatoes, cucumbers, medicinal herbs and many more!" - Hexagro
Hexagro Urban Farming has been working on the Living Farming Tree for several years, and was picked as one of the finalists in the 2015 Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, but now the team is looking to take its system to the public with a crowdfunding campaign. Instead of Kickstarter or Indiegogo, Hexagro is participating in the Katana Reward crowdfunding ecosystem, which is part of the EU-funded business accelerator Katana. Early backers of that campaign at the €549 level (~US$645) will receive a 4-module Living Farming Tree when they ship in June of 2018. More information is available at the Hexagro website.
Ikea Has Debuted An Indoor Farm That Grows Greens Three Times Faster Than A Garden
In late 2016, Space10 launched a flat-pack spherical garden called the Growroom that grows plants, veggies, and herbs.
Ikea Has Debuted An Indoor Farm That Grows Greens Three Times Faster Than A Garden
- Leanna Garfield | October 2, 2017
Rory Gardiner
Ikea is known for its flat-pack kitchen tables, islands, and cabinets.
Now the home furnishings retailer is experimenting with products that allow people to harvest food at home.
Space10, Ikea's innovation lab, has designed a prototype of a mini-farm that can grow greens and herbs indoors.
Called Lokal, it uses a hydroponic farming system — allowing crops to grow on trays under LEDs in a climate-controlled box. Space10 debuted the device in September at the London Design Festival in Shoreditch.
IKEA’s Indoor Farm Is Trying To Alter How We Grow Food
IKEA’s Indoor Farm Is Trying To Alter How We Grow Food
The prototype designed by SPACE10 can grow greens three times faster than traditional methods
- 5 OCTOBER 2017
Multinational furniture manufacturer IKEA has introduced an indoor farm with the hopes of giving people the ability to grow their own food at home. The prototype, or Lokal as it’s called, was designed by SPACE10, IKEA’s lab for innovation.
Lokal is the most recent prototype to come from The Farm, a SPACE10 lab seeking to change how we view traditional farming while implementing new food production methods into our cities.
By experimenting with hydroponics, which is the growing of food without soil, SPACE10 says that it’s able to grow food up to three times faster and with 90% less water than traditional methods, according to a blog post with Medium. In addition to being soilless and faster than traditional methods, Lokal is also able to grow greens without any sunlight at all. Instead, the plants survive solely off of LED lighting and mineral nutrient rich water, simulating what Lokal refers to as “The perfect spring day, every day”.
SPACE10 points out that the current global food system is problematic for a few reasons. For starters, our current method of food production is contributing to the changing climate and is also wasteful of resources that we are already running low on, like fresh water. Furthermore, current methods lend themselves to wasting food. The hope is that the benefits of hydroponic farming courtesy of Lokal will go a long way in remedying some of these problems.
People should understand that the benefits of Lokal are not exclusive to the planet. According to its post with Medium, the food also “tastes good, is more nutritious, pesticide-free and fresh all year round”.
While this is all very interesting, simply creating a hydroponic growing apparatus is not even the end goal for Lokal. The Farm seeks to take things further by meshing the agrarian and tech worlds in the future. As it posted in Medium, the lab has hopes of “Introducing sensors and machine learning to the vertical stacks and connecting the data with Google Home — to enable people to ‘talk’ to plants, in effect, and hear how they’re doing, as well as to teach children and adults alike about sustainable food”.
It will be interesting to see just how much of a change Lokal will be able to make on the food growth industry’s ecological footprint, but for now it’s still a prototype.
UVa Alum’s Green Innovation Brings Micro-Farm To Table
UVa Alum’s Green Innovation Brings Micro-Farm To Table
- BY RUTH SERVEN
- Sep 24, 2017
Hydroponic tables made by University of Virginia alum Alexander Olesen, founder of Babylon Micro-Farms, make fresh herbs available to students in the O-Hill Dining Hall at UVa.
Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress
Student dining at the University of Virginia has begun chopping some of its greens and herbs from an unlikely source: trays of ultraviolet-lit plants set up in Clark, Newcomb and Observatory Hill halls.
The innovative hydroponics system is the brainchild of UVa alum Alexander Olesen, who founded Babylon Micro-Farms last year. Olesen is now relying on UVa’s support to launch the company’s next phase as it begins selling the tables on the market.
Hydroponic farming is growing plants without the use of soil, typically in water or nutrient-rich solutions. Most hydroponic systems are industrial-scale, but Babylon’s system, about the size of a pool table, is meant for personal use.
On a recent Saturday, Olesen set up at Charlottesville’s City Market with a 5-foot by 4-foot table clad in pinewood. The wooden finish shields the Babylon team’s real pride: wires and sensors that measure water, light and temperature and adjust systems for maximum yield. Small cups set in the top of the table hold individual marigold and pepper plants. Purple LED grow lights hang above the plants.
“We provide all seeds and nutrients pre-measured, and there’s an automatic system of text updates so users don’t have to do anything,” Olesen said. “No one’s doing hydroponics like this. We’re one of the first doing something like this on the Eastern Seaboard. I mean, at an industrial level, everyone’s doing it, but no one’s doing automated, no one’s doing quality design.”
UVa has provided invaluable support to Babylon Micro-Farms, Olesen said, from giving grants to helping him brainstorm the next phase of the business.
“The idea is bringing micro-farming to a whole new level, in your living room,” said Christine Mahoney, director of UVa’s social entrepreneurship initiative, which helped fund Babylon’s prototypes. “Social entrepreneurs can solve the world’s toughest problems with smart business ideas.”
Now, Olesen is in talks with Bob Creeden, managing director of new ventures and the Seed Fund for UVa’s Licensing and Ventures Group, which connects innovators with funding sources.
Typically, the group helps UVa faculty who have business concepts or inventions, Creeden said, but he has a steady stream of students who want to bounce ideas off him.
“I sometimes think of us as one-stop shopping,” he said. “If you come to us, we’re going to be able to connect you with funding, or grants or staffing.”
Creeden has given Babylon advice about how to raise capital and scale its project, and right now he’s thinking about whether to invest in the company, he said.
Olesen’s models cost about $2,000 apiece. He has sold one to the Corner Juice Bar on the Corner, and said several restaurants are interested in custom projects.
He’s also received some interest from schools, and thinks they could help teach children about food and sustainability.
That’s why UVa Dining got three of the tables and planted basil, cilantro and mint. The tables drive awareness and education about food production, according to Samantha Jameson, UVa Dining’s sustainability coordinator.
“We encourage students to come in and pick what they need,” Jameson said. “All of these ingredients students can use to add to any dish or take to cook on their own.”
Olesen has sold about 15 tables so far, and he said he expects to deliver those orders by the end of the year.
Gardening Grows Big Profits
Gardening Grows Big Profits
Instant Garden helps children discover the fun of home gardening, and allows anyone to grow food, herbs and flowers in a small space, virtually anywhere.
Baseball may be the nation’s pastime, but gardening is making bank. The $36.9 billion dollar gardening industry is growing steadily, led by millennials and the desire for fresh, home-grown food, according to this year’s National Gardening Survey.
An estimated 90 million households participated in do-it-yourself lawn and gardening activities last year – inside and outdoors. That’s about 75-percent of all U.S. households.
Gardening can take place virtually anywhere: From urban environments with rooftop gardens, to vacant lots, to balconies, to backyards.
Companies such as Instant Garden are servicing this growing market. Instant Garden recently introduced the world’s first hydroponic, portable system to grow plants, flowers, herbs, fruits and vegetables at home – without dirt.
With Instant Garden’s patented hydroponic technology, people can garden indoors or virtually anywhere. The small, portable unit sits comfortably on a balcony, patio, or indoors near a window, and automatically provides water and nutrients to plants so that anyone can grow healthy food, beautiful flowers, or fresh herbs, quickly and easily.
However, not everyone is green with passion for this pastime. Some say that urban gardens take away land that could be used to help provide affordable housing. For instance, a new law was passed in San Francisco: The city became the first in the country to offer a financial incentive for urban farming. Owners of empty lots could save thousands of dollars a year in property taxes in exchange for allowing their land to be used for agriculture for five years or more.
But talk to tech workers, low-income families, or housing lawyers, and they’ll all agree on this much: There aren’t enough affordable places to live, and as a result, the city’s renters are pinched more than at any time in living memory.
In fairness, we hardly believe that giving tax breaks to owners of vacant lots if they allow urban farming on the land, is really an issue. It’s more of a red herring. The fact is, that land was vacant for a reason, and of the owner’s thought there was a better and higher use for the land, they would be developing it, assuming financing was available.
Research shows that urban farms reduce violence
There’s been a growing body of research that suggests that urban farming and greening not only strengthen community bonds but also reduce violence. In 2000, Philadelphia had 54,000 vacant lots, and so the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society reclaimed 4,400 of them, mowing lands, providing upkeep, planting trees and gardens, and erecting three-foot-high fences that served no purpose other than as a kind of statement that this land now belonged to someone.
The greening of these parcels (just 8 percent of the vacant land in the city) had an unexpected effect: Over the course of 10 years, it reduced shootings in the areas surrounding these renewed lots. Part of it was practical: The vacant lots had previously been hiding places for guns. But as Charles Branas, an epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania who released a study on the project late last year, says, “People just became more in touch with their neighbors. People felt more connected to each other.”
Calls from neighbors complaining of nuisance crimes—acts like loitering or public urination or excessive noise—went up significantly in the immediate vicinity of the newly greened land.
At first, Branas worried the land had attracted ne’er-do-wells, but what he came to realize is that it had emboldened neighbors to call the police for minor disturbances, something they hadn’t done in the past. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun to look at gardening as a tool for violence prevention.
At the Community Christian Alternative Academy, a charter school on the city’s West Side, students have been gunned down in neighborhood incidents. Principal Myra Sampson says they’re in a constant state of agitation. “A bump in the hallway can lead to a major flare-up,” she said. “It’s almost like, ‘The only thing I have is myself and my image.’”
To help combat violence she built a garden just north of their building, a place that now draws people from throughout the community, young and old, a place to share lunch or just congregate. Neighbors feel such ownership over the garden that Sampson has never seen the need to erect a fence.
The school’s also experimenting with aquaponics, and she says that the communal aspect of growing food and raising tilapia and perch has gotten students more invested in each other and in their neighborhood, so much so that she’s asked the city—which has embraced urban farming as a community development tool—to turn over 10 vacant lots to the school so that it might convert them into gardens and orchards.
Millennials Want Green Thumbs
According to the survey, the highest spending was among Baby Boomers, married households, those with annual incomes of more than $75,000 and college graduates – but the most important market force was 18- to 34-year-olds. Five million of the six million “new” gardening households were Millennials.
Purdue Student Startup Advances Automated Device With App To Grow Fresh Produce In home Hydroponic Appliance
August 24, 2017
Purdue Student Startup Advances Automated Device With App To Grow Fresh Produce In home Hydroponic Appliance
Scott Massey (left) and John Kissel (right) discuss two different grow-pods in front of their innovative hydroponic appliance called the Alpha III Pod. Massey founded Hydro Grow LLC to design and sell hydroponic, in-home appliances that produce fruits and vegetables. Their newest model, Alpha III Pod, incorporates advanced machine learning algorithms to create an ideal nutrient wash for each of the grow-pod’s plants. (Shannon Kane / Purdue Research Foundation image) Download image
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University students who developed an automated device to grow vegetables in consumer’s home have started a company to commercialize their technology and develop an improved third model.
Scott Massey and Ivan Ball, recent graduates of Purdue’s Polytechnic Institute, originally inspired by NASA-funded research into self-sufficient plant life systems, co-founded the company Hydro Grow LLC to commercialize their appliance. Others on the Hydro Grow team are James Carlson, a junior in the Department of Computer Science; and John Kissel, a past student of the Krannert School of Management.
Hydro Grow’s technology offers the Gropod, a self-sustainable refrigerator-sized unit capable of growing fresh produce in a consumer’s home. The system uses advanced machine learning algorithms, which allows the device to be aware of what plants are growing in it and adapt its environmental conditions to the specific preferences of that plant. After several prototypes, the company is developing an Alpha 3 model with improved functionality and a corresponding app.
Massey said the company’s mission is to eliminate consumer’s dependence on grocery stores.
“By 2050 the population is expected to grow to nearly 9 billion people, doubling the world’s food demand and water consumption,” he said. “Additionally, food deserts affect 23.5 million people in the United States. Half of these people are also low-income so if poorer communities do not have access to fresh produce, they are more likely to have health complications and additional expenses.”
Hydro Grow offers two services — a hydroponic appliance capable of growing produce, and seed pods from which the produce grows.
The Alpha 3 model is controlled by a user with the Hydro Grow app. The company will make the new model available to 10 to 30 early adopters.
“Users will be able to order the seed pods of their choice via our phone app, plug the seed pod into their system, update the phone application, and let the produce grow until it’s ready to harvest,” Ball said. “Users can remotely monitor the production of produce within each unit. The system will also have a clean cycle every few months that is activated via the phone application.”
Kissel said the company’s priority is to make the appliance as affordable as possible.
“Our most important goal is reducing the cost of the unit to make it a more sensible investment for most consumers,” he said. “Our system not only fills a need but can also help people who may have small gardens, by providing an alternative that produces 95 percent less waste and grows two to three times faster. Our feedback has been that people are ready for this product.”
A short video about Hydro Grow can be viewed at https://youtu.be/KE-nEQXHn0E.
Hydro Grow hopes to advance its technology as the company moves into its next stages of commercialization.
“We are progressing toward a robust system that can achieve optimal growth rates with the least amount of components and user maintenance,” Carlson said. “We hope to identify plastic or electrical manufacturing partners, with competitive pricing. We’re also working on a software development campaign to facilitate seedling orders on a ‘smart’ platform.”
Hydro Grow has raised over $80,000 through competitions to advance its technology. Hydro Grow hopes to collaborate with hydroponic nurseries in major cities to create and distribute seedpods. The company is also seeking investment funding.
“We’re actively looking for funding to achieve a full-scale commercial launch with our original equipment manufacturer. We hope to accomplish this launch by 2018,” Massey said. “We also are interested in taking on interns as the Hydro Grow’s business rapidly expands.”
About Purdue Foundry
The Purdue Foundry is an entrepreneurship and commercialization accelerator in Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship whose professionals help Purdue innovators create startups. Managed by the Purdue Research Foundation, the Purdue Foundry was named a top recipient at the 2016 Innovation and Economic Prosperity Universities Designation and Awards Program by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities for its work in entrepreneurship. For more information about funding and investment opportunities in startups based on a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Foundry at foundry@prf.org.
Writer: Kelsey Henry, 765-588-3342, kehenry@prf.org
Purdue Research Foundation Contact: Hillary Henry, 765-588-3586, hkhenry@prf.org
Sources: Scott Massey, scott@hydrogrowllc.com
Ivan Ball, ivan@hydrogrowllc.com
Indoor Grow Gardens Bring Your Gardening Inside
Indoor Grow Gardens Bring Your Gardening Inside
By Kim Cook | AP August 8, 2017 | Home & Garden
A tasty salad of tender pea shoots. Handfuls of fragrant herbs for the stew. Snack veggies for lunch boxes.
Keeping a fresh supply of greens and herbs on hand can be challenging as the growing season winds down, or if you don’t have a garden. But now you can plop a planter anywhere in your house, set a few timers, and in about 10 days you’ll be nibbling greens like a contented rabbit. All year round.
There are a variety of indoor grow gardens on the market that come with everything you need: planter, planting medium, seeds, fertilizer and a high-intensity grow light. Smart tech and remote controls adjust lighting and moisture levels, so even if your thumb’s not the greenest, you can still find success.
Linnea and Tarren Wolfe of Vancouver, British Columbia, decided to design a home grower after watching their kids gobble up sunflower and pea-shoot microgreens “like potato chips.”
Their Urban Cultivator looks like a wine fridge. It comes as a free-standing unit, topped with a butcher block, or it can be installed under the counter and hooked up like a dishwasher. The company offers an extensive seed selection, but anything from your local garden center will grow. (www.urbancultivator.net )
Linnea Wolfe advises home gardeners to do some research into the benefits of the edible, immature greens known as microgreens.
“Most of them only take about 7 to 10 days to grow,” she says. “You can mass-consume them, and the health benefits are extraordinary.”
The indoor garden trend is part of a, well, growing movement, says New York landscape architect Janice Parker.
“The technology of these kits simplifies hydroponic gardening at its best, and makes it available to all,” she says. You don’t need a yard, or favorable weather.
“What a pleasure to have fresh herbs, flowers and vegetables, and experience a connection to nature no matter where you are,” says Parker.
She thinks these kits shouldn’t just be relegated to the kitchen.
“I’d put them anywhere — dining room tables and coffee tables come to mind. Or in ‘dead’ spaces that have no light or interest,” she says.
She recommends growing plants with both flavor and flair: “Chives, dill, rosemary, fennel, basil and nasturtiums all have gorgeous flowers and beautiful foliage”.
Miracle Gro’s line of Aerogarden indoor planters includes the Sprout, which is about the size of a coffee maker and suitable for herbs, as well as a larger model in which you could grow just about anything. Pre-packaged seed pods like lettuces, cherry tomatoes, herb blends and petunias come ready to pop in the planter. An LCD control panel helps adjust lighting and watering needs. (www.miraclegro.com )
I Tried the Click and Grow Herb Garden — Here's How It Went
I Tried the Click and Grow Herb Garden — Here's How It Went
Lisa Freedman | 2017
(Image credit: Click and Grow)
Although I do most of the cooking and cleaning, I like to joke that my husband is in charge of keeping all the living things in our house alive. He makes sure I eat real meals like a normal human (not just cheese and gummy candies), he feeds our fish and the dog we sometimes babysit, and he's in charge of all our plants.
This division of labor came about after I killed three too many succulents and an air plant. (Seriously, how does one kill an air plant?) It's not entirely my fault, I like to tell myself — the light in our apartment is never the same!
I have also killed every basil kit I've ever tried, yet I was eager try the Smart Herb Garden by Click and Grow. After all, they make it sound so easy! Here's how it went.
Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 1
The setup seemed simple enough (especially considering I didn't read all the directions before I started. Don't judge! I was too excited!). I unpacked all the pieces, popped the three included basil pods into the device, added water, and was about to plug the machine in when I saw a handy little warning tag.
"Grow light cycle is 16h on and 8h off. To avoid running the light at night, plug it in right after waking up!" it said. Thanks for the tip, tag. Given that it was the early evening, I waited until the next morning to plug it in.
Buy: Smart Herb Garden, $60 at Click and Grow
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 2
This thing is bright! How bright is it? My husband said it was so bright, he thought I had left the refrigerator door open when he first keyed in the door one night after work!
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 3
Growth! Already! I couldn't believe it! My husband was getting grumpy about the light, saying that whatever money we were saving by not buying basil at the supermarket, we were now spending on our electric bill. I calmed him down by sending him this text from the Click and Grow website:
"We've worked with the world's leading LED technologists to invent a natural-looking light system that gives plants enough light to grow while only requiring 6 watts of energy. This keeps the electricity bill for running the Smart Herb Garden a whole year to around 4-5 dollars."
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 4
The sprouts were already starting to look like basil! And I hadn't even really had to do anything yet. I regularly checked the bobber, which indicates the water level, and I didn't have to add any water. So far, I didn't have to do anything!
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 7
It was time to take the plastic domes off (you're told to do it once the sprouts start to reach the domes). I removed them, and I swear I got a whiff of fresh basil. I was gardening!
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 9
My garden was looking so good, I got a little brag-y and decided to use my kitchen's chalkboard to show off what I was growing. My husband said it was hardly food, but despite his jabs, I could tell even he was impressed!
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 10
I was getting impatient and wanted to see what my basil tasted like. I ripped off one of the smallest leaves I could find (probably an act that's not endorsed by Click and Grow) and popped it into my mouth. It was flavorless and bitter at the same time. I felt bad for disturbing the plants. I do not suggest this.
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 13
Look at all this growth! My favorite part of this experiment was going into the kitchen every morning to see how much my plant had grown.
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 15
My husband and I went away for the weekend. Before we left, I filled up the water reservoir (something I'd had to do a few a times now) and briefly wondered if I should add the second included arm, which would move the light higher away from the plant. I decided against it because we were in a hurry and I wasn't sure it was necessary. Turns out, it was. The plant grew as tall as the light and some of the leaves got burned as a result. Ecks. Was this the beginning of the end, I wondered?
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 21
With the second arm added in, the plants seemed to be recovering nicely and they didn't seem too mad at me for my lapse in judgement.
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 29
I did it again! Argh! We went away for a full week and I thought there was no possible way the plants would grow so much in just seven days. A few of the tallest leave burned. This was on me.
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 32
With the third and final arm added into the light, I wondered when it'd be time to start cooking with my basil. I think part of me was waiting for a light to change colors, alerting me to the fact that it was time to eat. There was no such light and I checked the instructions, which let me know that I could have already been trimming and eating the plant!
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 33
I trimmed some leaves and made the best-tasting, freshest pesto I've ever whipped up. (I make a lot of pesto, but usually with stuff from the grocery store). Within a few days, new leaves were already growing up from the stem.
(Image credit: Lisa Freedman)
Day 41
The three plants are still growing strong (although some stems are starting to get a little droopy). And I'm up to my eyeballs in basil. Not complaining!
My Final Thoughts on the Click and Grow System
This electronic garden really can turn anyone's black thumb into a green one. It was extremely forgiving of all my mishaps and continues to grow a plentiful supply of fresh basil. While it does a lot of the work for you, it does not do all of it. You do have to add water (the bigger the plants get, the faster the water needs to be replenished). You also have to add the arms to the light (but there is some wiggle room there in terms of timing). And you have to watch the plants and know when it's time to harvest. Luckily, I'm beginning to get a feel for when my basil needs a trim. The biggest problem I'm having now is coming up with enough meals to use up all this fresh basil. (Again, not complaining.)
Of course, if you are even a little bit better at keeping things alive than I am, you should have no trouble with a basic pot.
Eindhoven Unveils Plans For A Solar-Powered City Block With Living Roofs And Urban Farms
Billed as a contemporary and hyper-modern development, Nieuw Bergen will add 29,000 square meters of new development to Eindhoven city center. The sharply angled and turf-covered roofs give the buildings their jagged and eye-catching silhouettes that are both modern in appearance and reference traditional pitched roofs. The 45-degree pitches optimize indoor access to natural light.
Eindhoven Unveils Plans For A Solar-Powered City Block With Living Roofs And Urban Farms
by Lucy Wang
The Dutch city of Eindhoven just selected MVRDV and SDK Vastgoed (VolkerWessels) to create Nieuw Bergen – a super green block of homes and businesses topped with living roofs and solar panels. Located in the inner city area around Deken van Someren Street, the project’s seven buildings will comprise 240 new homes, 1,700 square meters of commercial space, 270 square meters of urban farming, and underground parking.
Billed as a contemporary and hyper-modern development, Nieuw Bergen will add 29,000 square meters of new development to Eindhoven city center. The sharply angled and turf-covered roofs give the buildings their jagged and eye-catching silhouettes that are both modern in appearance and reference traditional pitched roofs. The 45-degree pitches optimize indoor access to natural light.
“Natural light plays a central role in Nieuw Bergen, as volumes follow a strict height limit and a design guideline that allows for the maximum amount of natural sunlight, views, intimacy and reduced visibility from street levels,” says Jacob van Rijs, co-founder of MVRDV. “Pocket parks also ensure a pleasant distribution of greenery throughout the neighborhood and create an intimate atmosphere for all.”
Related: The Sax: MVRDV unveils plans for a ‘vertical city’ in Rotterdam
Each of Nieuw Bergen’s structures is different but collectively form a family of buildings that complement the existing urban fabric. Gardens and greenhouses with lamella roof structures top several buildings. A natural materials palette consisting of stone, wood, and concrete softens the green-roofed development.
A Tabletop Hydroponics System For Your Kitchen
A Tabletop Hydroponics System For Your Kitchen
By Shawn Greyling
A couple of local boys and girls are wowing the tech/hydroponics and home appliance industry all in one fowl swoop. Here’s what you need to know about Homefarm.
An Auckland Park-based startup is developing a home appliance that will automatically grow greens in your kitchen. Homefarm’s mission is to inspire and enable urban dwellers across the globe to start growing and consuming their own fresh and healthy produce, to be enjoyed daily and all year round. Currently, they are running a crowdfunding campaign through IndieGoGo. If successful, this will enable Homefarm to start achieving their mission en-route to the total and complete commercialisation of their product.
At the time of writing, Homefarm is 92% in completing their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo (the campaign has been extended to 07 July 2017) and aims to raise R510 000. There are a range of backer tiers that start from as little as R120. According to the guys behind the project, Homefarm will cost an average of R60 in electricity to run when looking at electricity tariffs for the first half of 2017.
This revolutionary piece of technology is hoped to become as common a household item as the microwave or toaster, and means an immediate supply from harvest to table. This eliminates the regular energy costs like transportation, refrigeration and packaging associated with store-bought herbs and greens. Not only is it a sustainable way of growing your own legumes, herbs and other greens, but you know that the produce has not been treated with harmful pesticides and growth hormones. This product can be used all year round, giving you the upper hand on that old fruit and veg shop.
Have you heard of Homefarm before? What are your thoughts on the interesting product? It’s good to see local guys and girls take on the world like this. Sharing is caring so show this to a buddy on social media.
Why High-Tech Urban Farms Won't Displace Community Gardens
Why High-Tech Urban Farms Won't Displace Community Gardens
Jody Allard/May 16, 2017
To serve neighborhoods, they need to work together.
High-tech innovations can help urban farmers grow anywhere. (Open Agriculture Initiative, MIT Media Lab)
Urban farmers are increasingly leveraging technologies like machine learning and smartphone integration to build high-yield farms in small urban spaces. And while it may seem that those innovations upend the “slow food” idea of working together in the dirt to grow organic zucchini or lettuce, sharing time and crops with neighbors, the success of these higher-tech projects may hinge on the support of local community gardeners.
In theory, a commitment to building a local food system that meets the needs of urban dwellers without relying on long-distance transportation methods—which can leave a substantial carbon footprint—is great. Many contemporary urban farms are cropping up in direct opposition to large-scale agricultural operations that are perceived as harmful to people and the environment. But in practice, urban farmers have struggled with limited real estate, high-priced infrastructure, and other challenges unique to the city environment. (Chicago’s green rooftop initiatives, for instance, were successful in revitalizing interest in urban farming, but even the 3.5 million square feet of urban farmland on 500-plus rooftops has failed to make a real dent in the city’s food demands.) Those are constraints that high-tech innovations aim to solve.
HIGH-TECH HELP FOR URBAN FARMERS
Housed on only one-eighth of an acre, Urban Produce in Irvine, California, harvests the volume of crops typical of a 16-acre facility. The indoor vertical farming operation specializes in growing organic microgreens, herbs, and leafy greens in a controlled environment. While Urban Produce has only one location today, they have big aspirations. "In five years, we hope to build 25 urban farms worldwide. Imagine cities, corporate campuses, master-planned communities, cruise ships, and military bases growing their own local, organic produce," says Urban Produce CEO Ed Horton. "In 20 years, I expect we’ll be growing organic produce on the International Space Station."
Space farming aside, high-yield urban farms that produce thousands of pounds of food are only one piece of the tech-enabled urban farming puzzle. Other initiatives are focusing on bringing families back into the fold with self-contained farms that are designed for use in small city apartments. Grove Garden combines an aquarium with a garden to create a closed-loop ecosystem: you feed the fish, their water is cycled to water the plants, and the plants grow to feed you. Grove Garden uses one-tenth of the water of traditional farming methods, and it's all remotely manageable by a smartphone app.
Still in the fundraising stage, Lyfbox is another permaculture garden option that can produce 40 different crops in a few feet of growing space. But Lyfbox goes one step further with an app that leads urban farmers from planting to cooking, reducing food waste by providing recipe suggestions when a crop is ready to harvest. The app even connects farmers with their community to help them buy or sell their crops from their smartphones.
The most productive urban farms have one thing in common: they rely on tightly controlled environments in order to maximize crops year-round, regardless of local growing conditions. In these environments, growing conditions are automated based on a combination of farming wisdom, trial-and-error, and growing models. But until recently, there was no such thing as an ideal "recipe" for growing conditions—making each smart farming environment only as good as the data it has available.
MIT's OpenAg initiative, in partnership with Sentient, hopes to change that. Using the power of 2 million computers located in 4,000 sites worldwide, researchers set out to discover whether advanced artificial intelligence could offer farmers insight into the optimal way to grow crops. Researchers began by testing basil in growing chambers called "Food Computers," which are similar to the type of closed-loop environments used by many urban farmers. Soon, the AI made a surprising discovery: basil grows best when exposed to continuous sunlight. By the end of the 18-week experiment, researchers had collected three million points of data, per plant, per growth cycle. This data is publicly available to anyone who wants to work with it, and in the future, researchers hope to program the AI to adapt its growing conditions based on what it learns throughout the growth cycle.
MIT’s food computer information is open data, so any farmer can build one. (Open Agriculture Initiative, MIT Media Lab)
"Farmers know a lot about the conditions in their own environment, but not even the best farmer knows how to grow the plants optimally when you can control all these environmental factors at will," says Risto Miikkulainen, vice president of research at Sentient. "We believe these recipes will help farmers grow the best crops, with the most yield, in the places that need [them] most. This would not only reduce the cost of exporting food across the world, but also reduce the amount of energy required to grow plants. We might even see food being grown directly in grocery stores."
If grocery stores doubling as farms sounds outlandish, consider how unlikely growing meat in a laboratory would've sounded a decade ago. The technology exists to make these goals a reality, but it will take more than technology to revolutionize urban farming. Their success relies on a community that's interested in and educated about sustainability, and is willing to invest in it—and that's where small community gardens can make a big impact.
COMMUNITY GARDENS HAVE DEEP ROOTS
With increasingly divergent technologies and resources, you might expect community gardeners to be at odds with the new generation of high-tech urban farmers. As urban farms continue to adopt new technologies to enhance their crop yields, space constraints could eventually pit the two against each other. Are community gardeners excited by the prospect or afraid they'll lose the community that made their gardens so successful?
In many cases, today's community gardens exist to solve a problem very different from the one they were aiming at in the 1890s, when Detroit and other cities looked to them to offer residents a place to raise a homegrown solution to an economic recession that left laborers unemployed and hungry. Now, many gardens are an antidote to isolation from nature and neighbors. While some gardeners enjoy the financial benefits of selling food, most community gardens aren't intended to feed their communities entirely. Unlike large-scale urban farming operations, their primary focus is on teaching sustainable farming principles and connecting with members of their communities.
Higher-tech innovations won’t necessarily compete with community gardens that are deeply rooted in their communities. (Carlos Jasso/Reuters)
Karin La Greca is on the board of the Fresh Roots Farm, a two-acre nonprofit organic educational farm in Mahweh, New Jersey. While each volunteer receives some of the food the farm produces, she says it's the community, not the food, that attract volunteers to the farm. "Community gardens give a sense of place to the residents of the community," she says.
Sable Bender used to work for an organic farm that relied on draft horses to plow the fields. Now, she works for the largest greenhouse manufacturer in the country and does her own farming on a smaller scale, helping out at a local school garden. She sees larger urban farms and community gardens as essential to each other's existence. "As people learn about urban farms, it encourages them to get involved with a community garden and it creates a desire to know more and try growing something for themselves," she says. "On the other hand, you have people who have been involved with a community garden taking on larger urban agriculture projects."
La Greca agrees. Far from being afraid of the impacts of urban farms on her own small community garden, she welcomes the opportunity to teach sustainable farming principles to a larger audience. "Community gardens allow residents to connect with nature, something that has been lost along the way," she says. "As community gardens move forward both in municipalities and schools, I believe farmers will get the respect they deserve and the community will support the farmers and collaborate together to change our food system for a better future."
Artificial intelligence and smartphone-integrated farms might seem like strange bedfellows for a movement that prides itself on returning to a more "natural" state. Talking casually about machine learning and closed-loop ecosystems, these aren't your grandparents' farmers—and they may be exactly what's needed to make their vision of sustainable urban farming a reality.
Build Your Personalised Vertical Farm With Altifarm
Build Your Personalised Vertical Farm With Altifarm
Sindhu Kashyap 6 MAY 2017
Mumbai-based Altifarm gives you the delight of home farms and gardens in an easy modular and plug-and-play format.
In 2014, 31-year-old Arun Raj, who then ran a boutique industrial design studio, Primus Design, was working on a large granite-based modular garden design project for a Swiss client. After several iterations of the design, Arun realised that there were hardly any home-garden shops or brands. That’s when Arun says he felt the need for an all-season modular home farm. And this led to the genesis of Altifarm, a home garden platform.
With designs centred around tight and busy urban spaces, Alitfarm sells vertical structures that comprise special trays that one call fill with soil and sow herbs and vegetables for their daily use.
The team at Altifarm.
The Mechanisms
The idea was to make the process of gardening easier and also enjoy the benefits of a homegrown farm, without the need for routine watering, electricity, or recurring subscriptions.
The trays come with a watering sprout and a water level indicator. The water in the sprouts can be filled once a week, and the rest is taken care of by a pressure mechanism which ensures the plants are watered through the holes in the platform situated in the tray. Explains Arun,
“The self-watering system works with the help of capillary action (and gravity). There is no electricity or motor/pump involved. It also helps with oxygenation of roots leading to healthier plants.”
The trays also come with a Growlight expansion pack, which is used for indoor plants so that they can work on their processes away from the sunlight. Arun adds that LEDs are chosen to impart certain specific wavelengths, which promote vegetative growth, flowering, and germination.
By providing the exact wavelength to plants, the system is rendered highly power-efficient with minimal operating costs and the included timer takes care of auto-shutoff functions. It has an IP65 rating and is custom manufactured to specs for optimal performance. For colder climates, there is also the Greenhouse pack for outdoor use.
Working on a Three-Year Pipeline
Altifarm allows for both outdoor and indoor use. It provides one sq. metre of gardening space from no more than the footprint of a chair and makes an unused corner of the house into a mini-food farm.
“We are confident that Altifarm lets you grow almost anything, as long as plants are not too tall, that tiers are height adjustable and removable to facilitate this,” adds Arun.
The journey started in 2014 with paper sketches and a proof of concept with acrylic sheets that were held on frames made from hardware pipes. This meant close to three years of trial and error tests. After the basic mould, they followed it with a CAD-based design and 3D printing for trials and moved on to mould making.
While the first product was ready by late 2014, for the next three years, the team kept working and re-working on the product.
“The product you see is Altifarm 2.0 and we believe this is our best yet. All the learning we had over the years at the design studio has been invested into Altifarm and it has helped us meet amazing people and take some huge risks,” says Arun.
Setting The Team
Since Arun had already founded Primus Design, getting initial help wasn’t difficult. His mentor and neighbour David Ghosh joined in as the co-founder. With decades of experience in the manufacturing space, David was able to bring the needed manufacturing know-how and in-house production capability for the metal frame, while the plastic part of the business is handled by a captive vendor nearby.
The core team is a mix of designers, engineers, tinkerers, and production specialists. The 12-member team works out of Mumbai with a manufacturing facility in Pune. The first sale was made to Switzerland, where the team shipped 80 units to their friend and mentor Jean. Currently, the units are priced at $199.
Revenue and Numbers
The team is focused just on building and selling the units. Individuals will need to buy their own soil, seed, and all other farming tools.
Their revenue model is only through (online) sales of Altifarm and expansion packs, of which barring customised grow lights, everything is mostly done in-house or in close vicinity. While the concept of vertical gardens is relatively new in India, the idea is thriving in Mexico, Europe, US, and New Zealand.
Some of the companies in a similar space include Mexico’s Vertical Green, which was a part of a kickstarter programme. There also is Delhi-based Green Walls, US-based Green Sense Farms, and other US-based company City Farm.
“We plan to develop Altifarm further as a product platform and are already working on variants and expansion packs. We look forward to feedback from users to improvise the product and add more features and functionality. We also invite those who would like to join us in our journey towards Urban Farming Movement, by partnering us in sales and distribution,” says Arun.
