
ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system - davelnewton
https://shop.zipgrow.com/
======
orasis
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 water gone in 24 hours \- clogged
emitters \- water choosing off route through tower and not hitting the plants
on top \- emitters getting blown off causing water to spray outside tower \-
circuit breakers trip from pump

Overall I’ve probably lost half of everything I’ve planted in a zipgrow.

A professional operation with a daily maintenance routine could probably use
them, but they are no panacea.

~~~
syntaxing
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).

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

~~~
bryanrasmussen
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22723373)

~~~
Fiahil
> 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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elcritch
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 suffocating the roots.

For those interested in starting your own farm or just gardening I'd _highly_
recommend "UpStart Farmers" [2]. A friend of mine help's moderate it and is
really focused on helping people learn vertical farming and aquaponics. They
have an enormous selection of content regarding various aspects such as
nutrient mixes, dealing with pests, etc. The community is also active and
helpful to each other.

FYI: This is from the Canadian licensee's of the original Bright Agrotech that
was acquired by Plenty Ag [3]. I'm bullish that indoor farming will be a big
boon in providing more localized and therefore _fresh_ and nutritional
vegetables and leafy greens for much of the world's population. The economics
are slowly improving with LED efficiency increases and capital infusion to
scale farms.

1:
[https://search.proquest.com/openview/ccf876147b3e8a224da6770...](https://search.proquest.com/openview/ccf876147b3e8a224da6770203e5fa4d/1?pq-
origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y) 2:
[https://www.upstartfarmers.com](https://www.upstartfarmers.com) 3:
[https://www.plenty.ag/the-feed/plenty-acquires-bright-
agrote...](https://www.plenty.ag/the-feed/plenty-acquires-bright-agrotech-to-
globally-scale-impact-of-local-farmers/)

~~~
tomp
Do you have any idea, why do people concentrate on aquaponics, not aeroponics?
Is it just simply easier to implement, or better researched? Or is it actually
better (higher yield, closed-loop system, ...)?

~~~
Sophistifunk
Hydroponics would be the alternative to aeroponics, I think? Aquaponics
usually means a hydroponics system in a loop with fish tanks.

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flagada
I don't really understand the whole "urban agriculture" crowd.

People do often live in crowded cities, but there's plenty of space to grow
stuff on outside of cities. It's the same kind of thinking that gave us the
solad roads (which were, predictably, a catastrophic failure).

~~~
Mountain_Skies
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 agriculture crowd goes, they're concerned about the length
of their logistics lines to their tables. Raspberries grown half a mile down
the street in winter is better for the environment than flying them in from
another hemisphere... provided you get the energy costs of the indoor farming
system low enough.

~~~
Retric
Until you genetically engineer a more efficient plant and your back to a net
loss even assuming absolutely free panels and LED’s etc.

Vertical farming only really works as either artistic preference for maximum
visual appeal or the kind of science fiction where you assume only a small
handful of technology advanced.

~~~
pault
If you can genetically engineer a more efficient plant for growing in a field,
you can genetically engineer a plant that's more efficient to grow under LEDs,
no? I don't see how a hypothetical breakthrough in generic engineering makes
vertical farming a mad fantasy. There are certain crops that can't be grown in
high yield monocultures and have to be transported from other parts of the
world. I'm sure there are many cases where the math works, and I don't think
most people are talking about growing corn indoors when they talk about
vertical farming.

~~~
AngryData
There is no need to breed plants specifically for LED lights. All the newest
and most efficient and cost effective LEDs are white spectrum now and emulate
the sun far closer than any other light ever has. What matters is how
efficiently can you make the lights run, and right now it is pretty damn good
getting about 200 lumens per watts on those grow LEDs (versus about half that
for a shitty standard household LED)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Isn't it counterproductive to waste LEDs optimized for our perception to plant
growth which doesn't fully utilize the spectrum of sunlight? I thought that is
WHY grow lights have this purple sheen, be it traditional flourescent ones, or
contemporary LEDs, or a mix of red and blue ones.

~~~
AngryData
Despite the 'common knowledge', plants do utilize most of the visible light
spectrum, even green, just in different amounts. And on top of that these
white LEDs aren't just a single static white, their light spectrum are tuned
to specific growth spectrum and can be ordered however you want, but all come
out visibly to us as white of slightly different shades.

Those blurple lights are just awful, and not only do the LEDs have far less
energy efficiency being old tech, but their supposed "optimal" wavelengths are
anything but. They are blasting out extremely narrow wavelengths of light and
trying to make it more continuous by using a bunch of slightly different
narrow range colors, but it doesn't work as well as one would hope, especially
when they are coming from different point sources.

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vangelis
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.

~~~
dublinben
There's an entire community building these makeshift "space buckets" for
growing plants indoors.

[https://www.spacebuckets.com/](https://www.spacebuckets.com/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceBuckets/](https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceBuckets/)

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bootlooped
I am skeptical about the reusability of the media. How hard is it to clean all
the dead roots out of it? How do you sterilize it for reuse?

~~~
hanniabu
It's generally not feasible to reuse, not to mention if it's not done properly
then you put the next crop cycle at risk.

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mohankumar246
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..

~~~
tjomk
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.

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gdubs
I remember seeing this one a while back and thinking it was a cool concept — I
wonder if anyone’s tried on / what’s become of it:

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3037719/turn-your-kitchen-
into-a...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3037719/turn-your-kitchen-into-a-
garden-with-this-mini-fridge-sized-electric-farm)

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gonesilent
$399 for $25 in plastic. Go to home depot and buy some rain plastic gutters.

~~~
swiftcoder
Every time one of these vertical/rotating indoor farms comes onto the market
(usually via crowdfunding), it has roughly the same level of cost inflation.
Haven't quite figured out who they are conning into buying these setups.

~~~
gullyfur
What's the best DIY video on building something like this? I don't even know
where to start.

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zo1
I saw this guy a while back.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzcC6zkDDiY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzcC6zkDDiY)

I think he got a lot of flack for pointing out that the zip-grow towers are
way overpriced and you can DIY them yourself reasonably well. There really
isn't anything too-complicated about the ZipGrow towers, other than that they
use a sponge as a media.

~~~
gullyfur
Thank you!

