By Rachel Boyd Raleigh

December. 03, 2024

RALEIGH N.C. — Hydroponic farming is making a splash in the agriculture world, especially in urban areas.

What You Need To Know

• Hydroponic farming operates without soil or sunlight 
  

• The water-based method uses pH levels in a nutrient solution to grow plants
  

• Hydroponic farming can grow produce in half the time of traditional farming

Agriculture is the top industry in North Carolina, and a growing sector of it is hydroponics: farming without soil or sunlight. Instead, it relies on a water-based nutrient solution. 

“The plants grow without any pesticides, herbicides, period. We don't have to do that,” said Trevor Spear, the owner of Nanue’s Farm. “When you pull the lettuce off the panel, it is fresh to eat right now. No cleaning has to happen.”

Spear took up hydroponic farming as a hobby in retirement, and soon found an unexpected passion. When he started Nanue’s Farm in 2019, downtown Raleigh was one of the first to embrace hydroponic farming. The farm functions completely inside a re-outfitted shipping container and is classified as controlled environment agriculture or CEA.

“We grow carrots, turnips, rutabagas, basil, parsley, edible flowers,” Spear said. “The plant has to be enough size that it can maintain its weight, because we're working against gravity, because it's growing vertically, not horizontally.”

Nanue’s Farm is a closed-loop system with nutrient-fed water running every 18 minutes for three-minute periods. The plants spend two weeks at the seedling table before being transplanted to the growing panels. 

“So there's 22 panels in a row and there's four rows, there’s 88 panels,” Spear said. “We can grow about 500 heads [of lettuce] a week per farm and in peak performance, we can do about 600 if everything's hitting just right.”

He said one negative factor of this type of growing environment is power consumption. The LED lights run for 18 hours every day, replicating sunshine. But even with that expense, he only sees hydroponic farming continuing to boom. 

“I love the dirt farmer, and they do things that we cannot do, but as far as growing lettuce and root vegetables, we really are superior because we can do it in half the time,” Spear said. "So we grow a head of lettuce in about six or seven weeks, where a dirt farmer would take 10 to 12.”

Nanue’s currently supplies many local chefs and offers home delivery to the public. Although this isn’t a backyard set-up yet, Spear eventually sees hydroponics expanding to a neighborhood model in smaller more affordable versions — similar to a year-round community garden.