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ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

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Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#81

Post by Pfhreak »

atomi wrote: post #70
Pfhreak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having built a system in my basement to grow basil, spinach, and lettuce, there's a whole lot more to it than $25 in plastic. First, you should use food grade plastic, then there are lights, a pump, shelving, growing medium, fertilizer, ph adjustment, extension cords, timers, cups, air tubing, and air stone, and a bunch of other stuff. Then you have to get it all home, double and triple check you are doing it correct…

Perhaps not NFT. But you can get into other forms of hydro real cheaply if you're thrifty.

A kratky setup is cheap, but even that wouldn't be $25.

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#82

Post by elcritch »

doctoboggan wrote: post #23
elcritch wrote: post #19

I worked for the company that developed the technology. Personally not much of a green-thumb myself, but it's great to see how much you can grow with vertical towers, either in a greenhouse or indoors with LED lights. You can grow about 3-4x what you would get with a flat grow bed for many plants [1]. While the towers are great, the real trick is the grow media as you want it robust enough to survive while not suffoc…

I thought the technology looked familiar. I had been following the Bright Agrotech people on YouTube for a while, they produced great content for those interested in indoor hydroponics for the home grower. Do you know what happened to the company? Did they go bankrupt and have to liquidate their IP?

Sibling is correct. Plenty Ag acquired Bright Agrotech for people and IP. Bright was profitable but faced a difficult time scaling. It’s business model depended on individuals getting enough capital to start a farm. Many farms were profitable, but not all, and it’s difficult finding lots of people wanting to take out loans to start farms and banks didn’t understand the idea of indoor farms. Plenty Ag raised $200 million (largely from SoftBank) and needed to get a jumpstart on working tech and experts in the field. I’m still hopeful that once indoor farming tech keeps improving (based partly on large investment in the Plenty’s of the world) and banks accept indoor farms that individuals will be able to easily run indoor farms. A big part of that would be more labor automation. Plus if an asteroid ever hits Earth knowing how to grow indoor food would be valuable. ;) More realistically (hopefully!) indoor farming will be critical for colonizing Mars or asteroids. Long term, indoor farming and vertical farming will be critical technology for humanity to perfect, IMHO. An example (and fun) tech innovation was Bright’s invention of “water cooled LED towers”. That’s an early “Google style” innovation akin to using trays of cheap servers. Regardless hardware innovation takes massive amounts of capital. I’m hoping the Plenty Ag people are able to make fresh produce “a thing”! Edit: link to water cooled led’s https://info.brightagrotech.com/hubfs/Downloadable_Guides/Co...

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#83

Post by tjomk »

mohankumar246 wrote: post #79

The economical value of growing veggies after paying city rents/wages/ and infra investment doesn't paint a good picture profit wise. The food business is mostly based on low wages paid to immigrant employees. It works because usually these people live in rural areas. Look at the milk price. I haven't seen it increase in 5 years..

I think the goal here is going distributed so that by moving the end produce closer to you, you save on packaging, logistics, and other expenses. Plus growing something gives you joy.

Doing that in schools teaches kids about farming, about food, and how it gets on their table. I'm doing the same at home to teach my children the same.

Also in the times of the crisis you reduce the pressure to producers and shops by consuming your own instead of going to the shop.

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#84

Post by LoveMortuus »

orasis wrote: post #40

I own 20 ZipGrow towers and have become quite disillusioned with them across 3 growing seasons. The biggest problem is that there is nothing to buffer moisture on the roots if there is an intermittent problem. You might get a nice crop of basil growing and then a clogged emitter for 12 hours can be the death of those plants. Here are all of the failure modes I have experienced: - pump dying - Leak in base causing all…

Wouldn't something like Minecraft Vertical Farms be more effective, specially because you could just have a basin a top of another basin, and have the water drip from the top one to the ones below, thus requiring only one pump to pump the water that collects at the very bottom back up to the top. Of course, having aditional pump to add more water to the system would be helpful but not necessary. The only problem that I've faced with such a design is the amount of mass that all together would have and the required flood strength to support such a weight. That being said, having smaller such systems for room like enviroments shouldn't have many problems.

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#85

Post by bjelkeman-again »

AngryData wrote: post #56
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If (a really big IF) solar panels can get efficient enough while LEDs also become more efficient, in theory plants grown indoors being fed by LEDs attuned to the precise portions of the spectrum they need with the whole thing powered by the solar panels, you could get a better yield than outdoor growing. Figure out cost effective fusion, things get even better. But neither is the case right now. As far as the urban a…

Unless you do pull out fusion, you will always have too huge loss between solar panels and LEDs. As efficient as LEDs are now, and I know because I just built 1200 watts of the latest and most efficient LEDs that are available, they are nowhere near cost effective in comparison tot he sun. Plants are not nearly as inefficient as people believe, especially when you consider the fact that solar panels themselves can al…

I am curious about the 36 sqft (3.34 square meter) and 1200 watt. As we end up with considerably less watt per area. We use about 100 watt per square meter. You have about 360 watt per square meter. So we use less than a third. Preliminary tests show very good growth rates. We will have better data in a few months.

This is for an indoor leafy green, mostly sallad, aquaponics growing facility.

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#86

Post by jurip »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #43
philipkglass wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urban farming only makes sense for high value, easily perishable produce. Fresh herbs, leafy greens, tomatoes, and other salad ingredients can be produced with higher quality when they are harvested and used on the same day, and when the plants don't have to be bred for shipment-and-storage durability. The real benefit is superior flavor and texture for quality-focused, price-insensitive eaters. Note that this produc…

This is a false choice. Urban agriculture doesn't need to mean indoor agriculture / relying on excessive electricity / complex equipment etc. Cities can be plenty dense while still having enough space for people to grow potatoes for themselves and their neighbors.

It would be helpful to quantify "plenty dense" here. Paris has a population density of 21498/km2. Turning that around, that's roughly 46 square meters per person. That doesn't leave a whole lot of space for a potato plot if you're supposed to cook and eat those potatoes somewhere, too.

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#87

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Fiahil wrote: post #78
syntaxing wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to get my feet wet with hydroponics because my daughter loves fresh produce and I love the idea growing her favorite fruits and veggies. Do you now how Zipgrow compares to Aerogarden (the "farm" size one).

If you like fresh products, I'd suggest to stay away from anything like hydroponics. Vegetables won't taste good.

Ok but the selling point generally seems to involve how you will have fresh vegetables/fruits year round, or in a place where you cannot have your own garden. So you are saying that the selling point these products always make is false, I think that requires some citation/argument as to why it should be so - not just a flat statement.

on edit: example remarking on freshness being a feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22723373

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#88

Post by zo1 »

syntaxing wrote: post #80
Fiahil wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like fresh products, I'd suggest to stay away from anything like hydroponics. Vegetables won't taste good.

Can you please elaborate on that? This was actually one of my concerns since I would assume the "flavor(?)" is coming from whatever is in the water.

The "food" you give to the plants is in the water, including oxygen. They get everything they need from it, the taste is identical, and I have no doubt that a double-blind study would show that if it hasn't already. There is no "magic" inside soil other than its a media that happens to allow nutrients to exist next to the roots that absorb them, while allowing the plant to support its own weight and stay fixed.

You can grow using media such as sand, rocks, water, air, sponge, even packing peanuts. And in terms of fertilizer, it's the same as traditional farming except they have to be water-soluble. I spent a lot of time researching hydroponics, and once you peel back the layers, it really is simple with no magic involved.

Edit. Obviously this might be different for root vegetables like potatoes (they don't do well sitting in water). Though I've seen some articles with NASA attempting them with some luck in soil-less media.

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#89

Post by blargmaster33 »

dublinben wrote: post #67
vangelis wrote: post #4

Get yourself some plastic containers, a Rain Bird starter kit, some LEDs, and you've got yourself your own indoor grow op for much cheaper.

There's an entire community building these makeshift "space buckets" for growing plants indoors. https://www.spacebuckets.com/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceBuckets/

And it'as all drug related

Re: ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

#90

Post by Fiahil »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #87
Fiahil wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like fresh products, I'd suggest to stay away from anything like hydroponics. Vegetables won't taste good.

Ok but the selling point generally seems to involve how you will have fresh vegetables/fruits year round, or in a place where you cannot have your own garden. So you are saying that the selling point these products always make is false, I think that requires some citation/argument as to why it should be so - not just a flat statement. on edit: example remarking on freshness being a feature https://news.ycombinator.co…

> I think that requires some citation/argument as to why it should be so - not just a flat statement.

Just plant a tomato in a pot, put it by the window and wait. I could find you citation about the "freshness" of your garden products, but nothing beat experiencing it for yourself.

Hydroponics and LEDs are good for mass-producing a bit of basil and a lot of tomatoes, but the taste is just not there. They're bland, and unsavory.

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