My Treasure Tower

We have a new toy!  What is it? Why does it look like a crazy Star Trek transporter and what in the world does it do?

Aaaahhh…  Let me tell you!  This is our new, awesome and incredible, aeroponic Tower Garden!!!!   (I hear the cheers!  Or maybe that is the confused murmurs of “what?” I hear -Aeroponic is such an underutilized word my Microsoft Word doesn’t even recognize it.)  

An ingenious horticulturist, by the name of Tim Blank, worked for Disney World’s Epcot Center in the Living with the Land Pavilion.  He also worked for NASA and the Department of Energy.  He designed a way to use technological advances in farming to produce more food faster, with high quality and in less space while preserving the environment. 

"With the Tower Garden, people produce healthy and nutritious food with a fraction of the effort and natural resources and in a fraction of the time required by conventional gardening," Tim says of his proprietary growing system.

We have two raised 8X4 beds that we garden in and last year we had some harvest, but not hardly enough that made it so we didn’t have to get produce at the store as well. I love our gardens and we are not giving them up, but they are a lot of work and the soil itself can be a lot of work to get just right for growing.

Aeroponics is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil.  No soil!  I know.  It’s crazy talk, but it’s true.  Without the soil to try and navigate through and the nutrients being rained directly on the roots, the plants grow much faster than in a typical soil garden.

We, of course, researched it to death, because that is what we do, and we found that this would be a great fit for us.  The tower supports 20-28 plants, depending on if you get the extension (which we did). Even without the extension, this tower garden yields as much as two 8X4 gardens.  So, we are doubling our harvest!  The cost was about equal to that of all the nutrients and things that go into our other gardens and we could pay in small monthly installments.

We ordered it and my husband was eager everyday when he got home to see if it had arrived.  When it finally did, we easily assembled it and started reading where to go from there.  We figured out what we wanted to plant and started our seeds in these little rock fiber seed pods. 

After the seeds were added we covered them with vermiculite and put them by a sunny window.  We put ours in the playroom so the kids would be able to watch them grow.  I received a full report by each of those days.

(you can't see it very well, but we have a little guide we wrote so we know what plant is where)

(We have Romaine!  I use Romaine as bread really with all sandwiches I make and taco's)

(We have Broccoli, cauliflower, tomato, romaine and basil up now)

Today, day 7, we filled up the tower with 20 gallons of water and the all natural, pH balanced, tower mineral solution.  In the next few days we will start to move the seedlings over to their place in the tower and watch them grow and grow. 

I am so excited to be able to walk out on my deck, pick fully ripened fruits and vegetables and just put them on our plates for dinner knowing where they came from and that there was no processing, pesticides, fungicides or any other –cides for that matter.

There is a great time lapse video at www.nharden.towergarden.com of someone’s tower as it progresses.  I will be keeping a garden diary on this blog as the seedlings grow into fruitful plants both in the Tower Garden and in our traditional soil gardens.  Leave a message here if you have any questions, or you can email me through the site above.

What are some of your favorite things to plant?

Happy Sowing!