EcoVeggies urban farming system

Lowe sprinkles Arugula seeds on the fabric which will be harvested in 18 days. David Lowe of EcoVeggies and Ed Harwood of AeroFarms are looking to bring fresh vegetables to Newark by growing fresh vegetables year round at St. Philip’s Academy in Newark. Photo by Ed Murray.

“The interest in locally grown pesticide free produce is huge.”

By Ed Murray
The Star-Ledger
December 02, 2010

Excerpt:

NEWARK — Seeds are sprinkled from a pizza shaker, the kind you’d normally see filled with red pepper flakes or parmesan cheese.

Tiny granules of arugula are in one. Komatsuna and fun jen, an Asian variety that produces a crunchy like cabbage in each leafy bite, pour out of another. Every 18 days or so, they get doused over a soft, white cloth fabric neatly attached to eight metal trays on two levels of a mechanical contraption at St. Philip’s Academy in Newark.

Each is 30 inches wide and 60 inches long, all laying side by side in this noisy invention with LED lighting and water pumping underneath through plastic tubes to feed the root system. Students at the private school call it the beast, but the technology it uses brings them baby Japanese lettuce with Chervil, a licorice tasting herb, in half the time it takes to grow conventionally on a farm.

This indoor agricultural machine belongs to Ed Harwood, a former Cornell University professor, who founded AeroFarms, a company that uses aeroponics technology to develop urban farming in Ithaca, N.Y. The idea to attempt this work in Newark was brought to Harwood in 2009 by three New Jersey men, all former Wall Street guys, who started their own company — EcoVeggies — so they could start commercial urban farms in the city and deliver pesticide-free produce.

Read the complete article here.