I love growing my own herbs in my apartment, what I don’t like so much is the potting, watering, taking care of the greens. Especially during the holiday season my poor plants are on death row. Swedish design studio Tomorrow Machine and Berlin-base INFARM teamed up and developed a clever and stylish indoor farming solution: With the help of the microgreen growing kit it is no problem to cultivate fresh, local, organic, delicious greens right at home without bothering to much about them.
Tomorrow Machine is a Swedish design studio based in Stockholm and Paris, specialized in package, product and food concepts. Their vision is to build a better world through research, new technologies and intelligent material. For one of their latest project the studio teamed up with Berlin-based farming start-up INFARM. Together they developed an indoor microgreen growing kit which allows anybody to grow their own micro garden right at home.
“The idea of growing fresh produce in your home is no longer a futuristic concept.” Their vision is to “make indoor farming available and easy for everyone. Where you can have delicious greens without pesticides or long transportation, by growing it in your own home, it does not get more local and organic than that.”
The microgarden kit comes in a nice grey envelope and contains a reusable and renewable sheet of synthetic material which folds into a pyramid-shaped greenhouse. The second component of the kit is transparent seaweed based agar-agar gel, which is used as a growing medium. The gel allows the microgarden to remain self-contained. This means that you will never have to water the microgreens as their roots absorb moisture from the gel. Last but not least there are three varieties of organic seeds – peppery rucola, crunchy mustard and spicy radish.
Once the seeds are spread over the agar agar gel it takes three days in the dark for the seeds to sprout and another week in the light for them to be ready to eat. The greenhouses’ walls cut the agar-agar gel into six slices, which allows you to use the herbs slice by slice. Once you harvested the whole greenhouse you can start all over again!
I am absolutely fascinated by the origami-inspired green-house, its form and transparency not only allow the home-farmer to watch and experience the entire growing process, but also give it a futuristic and stylish look. I would love to have a microgarden at the center of my dinner table for everybody to watch and touch. Our verdict: Great idea and great design!
The microgarden project was crowd-funded. INFARM collected over 25.000 € on INDIEGOGO and is currently working hard to get the kits to their supporters. Click here to learn more about the project. If you are interested in getting your own microgarden kit, send an email to info@infarm.de. The design enthusiasts among you should definitely check out Tomorrow Machine’s webpage, where you can find lots of other cool projects by the Swedish studio.
Photo courtesy of INFARM and Tomorrow Machine