Studies have shown that keeping plants around makes people less stressed and more productive while also boosting creativity levels and improving overall health. Depending on your plant choice, they’ll provide you with food and medicine, clean your air of pollutants, or keep mosquitos away.
If you choose to grow edibles at home, you’ve made the right choice. Most produce lose half of their nutritive value from farm to fork. Those items in the grocery store have traveled on average over 1500 miles! That’s a significant carbon footprint and a long time between when it was harvested to when you finally eat it. Homegrown produce, on the other hand, contains 100% of their nutrients and is picked right when you’re preparing your meal – they can’t get any fresher! Let’s not forget the pride, serenity, and delight you’ll feel from consuming foods you nurtured and know have no chemicals or pesticides.
Now that you’re inspired to grow a garden, here are a few great inventions that make it fun and super easy to motivate you to start planting today!
Grow Jar
The Grow Jar is the most comfortable and cheapest hydroponic system invented. It’s a small indoor planter made of see-through recycled brown plastic so you can see your plants’ roots growing and know when to top up the water. Minimal space and water are required, and no soil, power, or pesticides. The color of the planter is brown because it’s hue acts as a UV barrier to block out harmful rays and prevent algae from growing inside.
The World’s Smallest Garden
With the World’s Smallest Garden, you get a pod that fits into the mouth of any glass bottle. The product encourages repurposing and upcycling, and so you can use an empty bottle of your choosing. When you find that perfect home for your new herb, you plug in the pod that contains the seed, soil, and fertilizer into the bottle filled with water, and within days your seedling will sprout, sending its roots down into the container. It’s a fun gift idea and a beautiful decorative piece as well!
VEG Buddy
VEG Buddy is a self-watering pot for those who can’t seem to keep a plant alive because they keep forgetting to water it. The water reservoir is in the base. In the soil compartment is a magic wick that soaks up water to supply the roots of the plant – this way, it doesn’t get too much water and never goes thirsty either as long as you fill the reservoir up about once a week.
Pico
Pico is like a pocket-size planter that can fit anywhere, even as a magnet on your fridge. Any plant growing in it will thrive thanks to the telescopic LED growing lights and built-in self-watering system. The transparent window on the container lets you see when you need to add water. Pico is cheap and straightforward, making it possible to fill your space with plants!
Herbert
Herbert is like a living canvas. It is a vertical hydroponic garden finished in beechwood or poplar – clean, space-saving, beautiful, and 40% more efficient than conventional farming techniques. It’s indoor farming made elegant. It also comes with an app that guides you through the growing process and serves as a remote to adjust light settings to suit your needs.
VÄXER
To create this product, IKEA worked together with researchers from The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to test out different growth mediums, seeds, and more to create the perfect indoor garden system for anyone.
Ronnie Runesson, a product developer at IKEA, said:
We wanted to create gardening kits that would simplify for people to grow their own herbs and vegetables 12 months a year. Whether you live in the northern parts of Sweden in the wintertime or if you live in China or North America, you should be able to succeed with your garden. It’s about creating a more sustainable and healthier life at home for everyone.
Herbstation
A mobile, stackable, self-watering, soil or hydro system that’s so easy, all you have to do is water it about three times a month. The system also incorporates root aeration and LED grow lights, so your plants grow quicker and healthier.
The Herbstation is also great for growing microgreens – which are a superfood. Studies show that microgreens contain 40 times the nutrients than a mature plant and are easy to digest.
The Grove Ecosystem
The Grove Ecosystem is a farm, fish tank, decorative feature, and a beautiful, fun way to grow food in your home. It is an aquaponic system – a natural process that harnesses the relationships between fish, beneficial bacteria, and plants – designed and built by MIT engineers.
It consists of a 25-gallon fish tank in which the fish process the food they are fed and produce ammonia-rich waste, which is food for the beneficial microbes that then convert it to nitrates – organic plant fertilizer. The fish tank is on the bottom, and the nitrates rise to where the plants are, thus supplying them with the nutrients to thrive.
The system comes with a mobile app that guides you through the entire process – from adding fish to your tank to planting your first seeds to harvesting your crops. It is also an almanac full of decades of indoor growing knowledge.
There are fans, pumps, and lights that adapt according to readings from water level sensors, as well as humidity, water, and air temperature readings.
