A harvest out of water

There's nothing like being able to pick fresh lettuce leaves or herbs straight from the garden - or, in the case of Anne Shaw, straight out of the water.

Together with husband Chris, Mrs Shaw has been growing hydroponic lettuces and herbs from their Mt Martha property for 20 years.

Anne and Chris Shaw with some of their hydroponic lettuce at their Mt Martha property

“We grow the fancy lettuces, such as oakleaf, coral, butter, mignonette and mini-cos, as well as basil, coriander, rocket and spinach,” she said.

“Hydroponics is surprisingly efficient in water usage. We use less than five per cent of the water needed to grow crops in the ground.”

Mrs Shaw said growing food hydroponically is great fun.

“You can do it using plastic buckets, storm water pipes - anything. All of our crops are on tables, so they are at waist-height. And there’s no weeding and no grit or soil in our plants.”

The Shaws also use integrated pest management.

“We use the good guys to kill the bad guys,” Mrs Shaw said.

“We buy in tiny wasps which eat the aphids, using natural mechanisms to kill the pests.”

Their label, Peninsula Aquagrowers, is sold through Mornington-based company Simply Fresh to restaurants, cafes and fruit growers around the peninsula.

Of course, hydroponic growing means there are crops every day of the year. “You’ve got to enjoy this because you’re working every day,” Mrs Shaw said.

“But there is something good about working with nature.”

source

Rooftop farms aim to make greens greener

An innovative New York company is designing, financing, building and operating hydroponic greenhouse farms on the roofs of supermarkets and schools, in a bid to produce locally grown food with low carbon and water footprints.

Brightfarms supplies its supermarket clients with fresh vegetables, such as lettuce and tomatoes, that have not had to endure a truck journey of up to six days from California, Mexico or Canada. Transporting produce is expensive, reduces the flavour and nutritional goodness, and is both fuel and CO2-intensive.

Brightfarms also has acted as an adviser to such projects as Gotham Greens, which was started by green entrepreneur Viraj Puri and investment banker Eric Haley. Gotham Greens recently built a 140 sq m greenhouse on a Brooklyn rooftop with the aim of growing 30 tonnes of organic fruit, vegetables and herbs each year for sale through local shops, farmers’ markets and to restaurants.

It uses a combination of energy management technology, solar panels and hydroponics technology to yield up to 30 times more produce than conventional field production, using 20 times less water during the growing process. Hydroponics involves growing plants in mineral-rich solutions without soil.

The company has signed up eight supermarket chains in the US, including three of the country’s largest, and has four farms under construction.

A one-acre farm costs about $2 million (€1.4 million) to build and would generate $1 million to $1.5 million in annual revenue, providing attractive profit margins given the reduction in shipping costs for the supermarkets, the company said.

“Our plan is to achieve $100 million in revenues by the end of 2015 and $1 billion by the end of 2020,” said chief executive Paul Lightfoot.

Among the investors in Brightfarms are the founders of US solar power giant SunEdison, Brian Robertson and Jigar Shah, and San Francisco-based tech investor and entrepreneur Ali Partovi.

Shah is also the chief executive of Carbon War Room, a green not-for-profit group set up by the Virgin founder Richard Branson.

“BrightFarms is an excellent example of aligning environmental goals with profit by eliminating waste, because photosynthesis is very efficient, whereas trucking a tomato 3,000 miles in a fuel-guzzling fridge is not,” said Partovi.

source

Rooftop Hydroponics on NYC Restaurant

I stepped onto the roof of the West Village restaurant Bell, Book and Candle and caught a glimpse of the future. I was surrounded by 60 white plastic towers seemingly sprouting from the floor. Seventy varieties of herbs, vegetables and fruits dripped from the towers, but there was no dirt up here.

Chef John Mooney -- my tour guide -- is able to grow nearly two-thirds the vegetables for his restaurant precisely because he doesn't rely on soil. Instead, Mooney and his partner Mick O'Sullivan have installed 60 vertical tower hydroponic systems creating a plastic, vertical, dirt-free garden.

As Mooney describes, hydroponics rely on "liquid soil." Instead of dirt providing the plants with their food, nutrients are delivered via water (i.e. the water is fertilized, not soil). Mooney claims that he can grow produce much faster by not relying on dirt. His lettuce, he believes, grows 25% times faster than conventional lettuce.

It's no coincidence that this glowing white rooftop sprouting pods looks like the future. Mooney says he already sees that future arriving.

I think in the next 10 years it will be so common. I mean I've seen so many things happen between last year and this year. Just yesterday we had a friend of mine who owns a big record label in Chicago, he put 10 towers on his personal home in Chicago. There's another sustainable seafood restaurant I do work for in Washington DC, we have 20 towers coming for them in two weeks... Even Hearst Tower they have some of this technology there.

Hydroponic growing requires a constant circulation of water, but Mooney and O'Sullivan have limited themselves to clean power. A solar panel powers the nutrient-dosing system and the water is then fed to the plants using gravity. Once the vegetables are harvested, Mooney lowers his harvest by pulley down the six flights from rooftop to his restaurant below.

In this video, Mooney shows us his rooftop garden in springtime and talks about why hydroponics and vertical farming are in our future.

source

Greenhouse gardener vies for cola grant

SHOW LOW — A local man’s greenhouse is vying for a $50,000 prize from Pepsi and he’s asking citizens to vote his way to the top.

Greg Hancock’s project uses hydroponics and recycled two-liter soda bottles to grow vegetables and other plants. Hancock’s greenhouse was submitted for voting in the Pepsi Refresh Project and, if he gets enough votes this month, will be eligible to win one of the 10, $50,000 prizes.

Hancock said his greenhouse has been running for four years, with a second one built last year. Both greenhouses are located behind the WME Show Low 5 Theatre and Majestic Music. Plants have sprouted in the first greenhouse and the bottles and the hydroponic system are in place in the second.

Under the system, Hancock said he has a reservoir of water and adds organic nutrients such as worm castings, bat guano and compost. This way, he said the system provides more nutrients than soil.

For 15 minutes every hour, Hancock said the system takes water out of the reservoir and fills the two-liter bottles to where it touches the roots of the plants. After some time, the water drains back out and heads back to the reservoir. Overall, he said the process takes half an hour to run.

“There’s no waste at all,” he said. “Everything’s recycled through the system.”

In his greenhouse, Hancock said, he grows 35 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes and 20 varieties of hot and sweet peppers. He said he also grows herbs such as stevia, an organic sweetener. He said he has even tried cross-pollinating two white tomatoes to create a White Mountain tomato, and, while it has not sprouted yet, he is hopeful he can create the locally grown variety.

In both greenhouses, Hancock said he has cameras that stream live video of the plants growing. He also produces podcasts instructing the audience on alternative methods for growing vegetables.

Hancock submitted his project to the Pepsi Refresh Project back in April and, out of 260,000 entries, was one of 1,500 selected for further review. He wanted to be posted for voting in May, but since his introductory video was too long, he did not make it. He shortened it to a minute, per Pepsi’s rules, and his project was posted for voting June 1.

The Pepsi Refresh Project, Hancock said, gives away over $1.1 million each month in grants in amounts of $5,000, $10,000, $25,000 or $50,000. The grants, he said, do not require a match, just a project Pepsi thinks will benefit the world.

“They’re open for everything,” he said. “It has to be an idea that can change the world a little bit.”
Once the projects are posted, they are open for voting by the public on the website at www.refresheverything.com. The projects that receive the most votes receive the grants, of which there are 60. Pepsi is also doing a promotion called power voting, which gives people five to 100 votes for codes found in Pepsi cans or 12-pack boxes.

Voting on this round of projects ends June 30.

If Hancock receives a grant, he said he will expand his system to include aquaponics and provide fresh fish as well as vegetables. With an aquaponic system, he said fish will live in the reservoir, eating the algae that the plants create. In turn, the emulsion the fish create is another nutrient that can be used to grow his vegetables.
Hancock said he would also use the grant to educate the public on the benefits of hydroponic and aquaponic systems. With food prices rising, he said maybe his lessons will lead people to produce more locally-grown food.

“We’re trying to teach a man to fish,” he said. “It’s the educational aspect we’re really pushing for.”

Hancock’s project can be found and voted for at www.refresheverything.com/remotegardener.

source

Gordon Graff And The Promise Of "SkyFarming"

A researcher at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture is developing designs of vertical farms that would not only work economically, but may also yield more than just food. In his Master’s thesis, Skyfarming, Gordon Graff explains:

A vertical farm must be able to produce enough food to cover the cost of its day to day operations and, ultimately, the capital cost of the building’s construction (or renovation). While this is clearly dependent on some factors outside the realm of architectonics, such as the market price of food and current state of grow-lighting technology, the physical arrangement of the building can have a profound impact.

Graff created an entire hydroponics system that fits into a 14,700 square meter building and consumes as little as 14.4 cubic meters of water, as compared to 1800 and 3500 cubic meters of water used up in an acre of lettuce in the state of California, roughly 240 times that of Graff’s system.

Vertical farming would increase a city’s resilience to the more long- term, systemic alterations that human society is widely expected to experience in the coming decades. With vertical farming’s maximally efficient resource use and functional segregation from the natural world, cities could achieve food security amidst the environmental transformations and resource shortages that would cripple a conventional urban food network.

 source

Hydroponics and solar power combine as a food and alternative energy solution

It may not yet be a household name, but Get IT Co, the country's first hydroponic solar farm operator, is confident it can popularise the concept and is targeting a 10% share of the local solar power market in the next two decades.

It takes 19 rai to generate one megawatt of electricity, so producing 1,000MWto fulfil current energy needs will take 19,000 rai, making it impossible to develop solar farms without thinking of food production, according to Mr Polathorn

In partnership with PTS Progressive Engineering Co, Get IT now runs two hydroponic solar farms in Prachuap Khiri Khan province - one with 25 kilowatts of capacity in Hua Hin district and the other with one-megawatt capacity in Muang district's Bor Nok village.

Hydroponics is the cultivation of plants in nutrient solutions rather than in soil.

All power generated is supplied to the Provincial Authority of Thailand, while the vegetables grown onsite are sold to Bangkok markets.

Get IT is now preparing four more projects in Nong Khai, one in Sakon Nakhon and three in Udon Thani.

The eight new projects, which will generate a combined 8 MW, will all be completed this year.

"Ours is an agriculture-based economy, so any land used for solar farms alone will be at the expense farming. Therefore, we want to produce both electricity and food on the same piece of land," said Polathorn Neamsiri, managing director of PTS.

The company is the strategic partner of Get IT, which was established in 2008 under Board of Investment privileges in return for using the local office as its Asian headquarters.

Get IT's website (http://www.greenenergytechnology.asia) says the company entered into a joint venture with Thai Diamond City in April to build Thailand's largest solar park at 100 MW, to be located in Kaeng Krachan National Park north of Hua Hin town.

"It takes 19 rai to generate 1 MW of electricity, so producing 1,000 MW to fulfil current energy needs will take 19,000 rai, making it impossible to develop solar farms without thinking of food production," said Mr Polathorn.

He said the high temperatures present at a solar farm are conducive to higher fruit and vegetable output.

"Hydroponics can produce higher yields, and output can be harvested more quickly than with normal farming methods, so we can recoup our investment relatively soon," said Mr Polathorn.

He said Get IT has spent 87 million baht over the last six years on hydroponic solar farming.

The eight new solar projects will cost a combined 600 million baht.

Next year, investment is expected to top 2 billion baht, prompting Get IT to embark on an aggressive fund mobilisation drive, said Mr Polathorn.

With production costs for hydroponic solar farms relatively high, the company is considering its own solar cell factory and quartz smelting plant in Thailand to lower the cost of solar panels.

Mr. Polathorn said such a move would cost 6 billion baht.

"We intend to account for 10% of the 54 gigawatts planned under the country's 20-year solar power development plan," he said.

"To achieve this target, we welcome partnerships with all licensed solar power developers along with landowners."

Philip Napier-Moore from Mott MacDonald, a British solar engineering firm, said solar farm development requires being connected to the power grid, as battery chargers are still too expensive and have a short lifetime for storage capacity.

source

Bahrain working on hydroponic gardens

Bahrain municipal officials are working on a project on hydroponic gardens, where plants are grown without soil, in a bid to turn concrete jungles green.

Work is going ahead to build a training centre and exhibition for hydroponic gardening at the Salmaniya Garden and it will take two months to have the place set up, said senior government officials.

Soon the Kingdom's residents will be able to attend free workshops on hydroponic gardens.

The Manama Municipal Council has set aside BD4,000 ($10,612) for the scheme, besides shouldering the construction cost of the centre and exhibition.

However, the council is willing to cover additional costs depending on the interest of people to learn about the hydroponic experience.

Bahrain's five municipal councils are now set for a non-obligatory introduction of the scheme in homes and buildings free of charge to gain interest from the public.

The scheme's launch will be followed by a new municipal obligation that all multi-storey commercial buildings in Manama should have rooftop gardens, with a national law currently being drawn up.

Councils believe that this will further help promote green areas in present concrete jungles.

A trial of the scheme held at selected social centres in co-ordination with the Social Development Ministry has been successfully completed.

Councils have already agreed on a deal to finance the scheme with Tamkeen and is awaiting a memorandum of understanding to be signed.

'We have already prepared a draft on how to promote hydroponics in Bahrain and a specialised company has been assigned to handle the responsibility of offering training and showcasing it to the public,' said council vice-chairman Mohammed Mansoor.

'The company has selected the Salmaniya Garden for the scheme and they want to set up a training centre and exhibition there and we have agreed to fund it from the Manama Municipality coffers,' he said.

'The facility will include a greenhouse-like structure and a fish tank where fish soil will be moved with water through tubes and distilled on plants and then circulated again to the tank.'

Mansoor said the council's main aim behind introducing hydroponics in Bahrain was to make people start loving planting and turning the practice into a daily lifestyle requirement.

'Only a few consider planting important, like wearing clothes, combing hair and eating, despite it being the source of beauty and oxygen,' he said.

'We have already tested hydroponics in different social centres in Bahrain and it has proved a success according to an initial study presented to us and now we are working to train those interested, whether Bahrainis or expatriates,' he added.

'A time-frame is currently being planned for non-obligatory implementation in homes and buildings, which we will coincide with the end of training for the first batch of volunteers.'

He said Tamkeen has agreed to fund the scheme, which it believed would provide jobseekers with the possibility of exploring new markets and opening up new businesses.

'It will become obligatory around a year from now with the introduction of a joint municipal regulation and a national law that is already being drawn up.'

Mansoor said a number of people had already started the method at their homes or buildings with certain seeds and crops.

'There are six basic types of hydroponic systems - wick, water culture, ebb and flow (flood and drain), drip (recovery or non-recovery), nutrient film technique (NFT) and aeroponic,' he said.

'There are hundreds of variations on these basic types of systems, but all hydroponic methods are a variation or combination of these six.'

According to Mansoor, the new scheme would ensure that people cannot come up with an excuse that they don't have backyards to grow plants.

'Hydroponic gardening can be done anywhere and anytime, even in places people think it is not possible,' he said.

'It can be done in a tiny courtyard, in a tiered system or in a garage with no sunlight at all,' he added.

source

Tilapia, lettuce co-exist happily in LaPorte

In a little corner of LaPorte, a sustainable ag operation is quietly ramping up, getting ready for large-scale production. "Eat local" folks are already enjoying ultra-fresh salads from the LaPorte facility. As soon as processing is available, they will be able to dine on fresh tilapia from the same source.

Quatrix Aquaponics is an unusual agricultural operation that produces both fresh produce and tilapia. The business, owned by Matthew Westenhaver, consists of a large greenhouse and an attached steel fish house, all located on County Road 54G in LaPorte.

Matthew Westenhaver, owner of Quatrix Aquaponics in LaPorte, shows how lettuce plants get their nutrients from water that flows from fish tanks in another part of the building.

After three years of building and developing the ecosystem, Westenhaver started selling produce from the greenhouse this past winter. "We were the only ones selling fresh produce at the winter farmers markets," he said. It was a big hit with customers, and he plans to be at several markets this summer.

Westenhaver also harvested the first tilapia recently, and his family has been experimenting with different ways to cook the fish. Whether it's smoked, broiled with butter, blackened or baked, he reports that it's delicious.

"People are nipping at our heels for the fish," said Westenhaver, and he hopes to be able to satisfy that demand soon.

The term "aquaponics" comes from aquaculture, or fish farming; and hydroponics, a way to grow vegetables without soil. Aquaponics was developed primarily as a way to conserve water, always a plus in arid Colorado. According to Westenhaver, the system uses 80 percent less water than conventional farming, since the same water is continuously recycled.

Aquaponics relies on a symbiotic ecosystem, in which fish provide a natural fertilizer for the plants and the plants, in turn, filter the water so it can be returned to the fish tanks. It's an all-natural system, Westenhaver explained, with no pesticides, chemical fertilizers or herbicides added. Also, there's little waste.

Westenhaver buys tilapia fingerlings from an outlet in Louisiana. They're raised in four large tanks, each holding about 1,000 fish, and it takes about 10 months to grow them to market size. Westenhaver figures he could harvest about 11,000 pounds of tilapia a year.

After water leaves the fish tanks, filters get rid of solid waste and methane gas while beneficial bacteria convert the ammonia to nitrogen. Water is then piped to long troughs in the greenhouse, the hydroponics part of the operation, where plants grow on a floating "conveyer belt" of Styrofoam, their roots dangling in the water.

The water system is gravity-fed, requiring only a 2-horsepower pump to keep things moving.

Plants, which currently include a variety of lettuces, basil, cabbage and tomatoes, thrive on the nutrient-rich water from the fish tanks. The water includes nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, so the only nutrient Westenhaver has to add is iron.

Westenhaver is especially proud of the quality of his products. When a person buys frozen tilapia fillets in the grocery store, he noted, there's no way to know about the water in which the fish were raised. His water quality, on the other hand, is tested regularly and is 97 percent waste-free after the plants finish their filtering.

The Quatrix tilapia, Westenhaver said, are "far superior to anything farm-raised."

As for produce, the nutrient content of Quatrix lettuce is much higher than that of greens that have been trucked in from other states, Westenhaver said. And, less transportation means a smaller carbon footprint.

Aquaponics has been successfully used in several countries, both in tropical climes and the cold north country. In Alberta, Canada, there is a five-mile-long aquaponics operation. The system is also used in the Virgin Islands, and that's where Westenhaver received his aquaponics training.

Unlike the Virgin Islands farmers, Westenhaver has to deal with a four-season climate. While designing his aquaponics system, he was determined to find an efficient, earth-friendly system for heating the greenhouse.

He built a subterranean heating system, consisting of corrugated flexible tubing covered with 800 tons of crushed rock. The tubes come to the surface inside the greenhouse, allowing for the exchange of warm and cool air. During the day, solar-produced heat is stored in the rock. Circulating fans bring the warm air into the greenhouse at night.

Westenhaver and his parents, Ken and Marcia, tested out the heating system by building a much smaller version under their LaPorte sunroom.

Some conventional heating and cooling systems are required to supplement the sun's rays. Tilapia is a tropical fish requiring warm water, and a swimming pool heater keeps the fish happy. For summer cooling, the greenhouse has swamp coolers and additional fans.

Quatrix is a two-man operation at present, with business operations handled by Josh Best. Westenhaver's parents also fill in where needed.

"These are the farms of tomorrow," said the optimistic Quatrix owner. With little land, not much water and a symbiotic system, aquaponics operations can grow fish and produce to market size very quickly. At the same time, they provide a food source that's nutritious and local.

Westenhaver is now contacting local restaurants about his products, so it's possible that eco-conscious consumers will see Quatrix fish and veggies at their favorite dining places soon.

source

Forston Labs Releases New Hydroponics Package

Forston Labs introduces a new Lab Navigator Package for hydroponic operations to efficiently measure, balance and control the major factors effecting plant growth and blooming.

With its award-winning, hand-held Lab Navigator at the core, Forston provides sensors for carbon dioxide, pH, temperature, soil moisture, relative humidity, light intensity and light spectrum – all measured simultaneously providing quantifiable insight into a grower’s light, nutrient levels, air and status of the growing medium.

The Lab Navigator has been an industry standard in the educational world for over 25 years, and with proven success in water and environmental measuring, it is a natural solution for the hydroponics industry. While pH, temperature and other meters already exist, the ability to take all the necessary measurements at one time, through one device, with only one interface saves time, money, and training. This eliminates having personnel carry around multiple meters with multiple ways to measure.

More importantly, all the measurements are stored with specific date, time and location so that trends can be identified and monitored over time. No longer is manual note-taking necessary to determine what was done differently during seasons that made the grow-cycle better or worse. All the measurements are uploaded from the Lab Navigator to the PC (into Excel or any data management system), or simply stored in the Lab Navigator for future reference.

Notes can be input alongside the measurement files or an on-board microphone may be used for comments if the grower wants to include them as the status of a crop is being assessed. The unit comes with the Lab Navigator, pH sensor, and temperature sensor. Additional options may be added for carbon dioxide, various light measurements, conductivity, nitrates, potassium, etc.

source