Growers are experimenting with aeroponics, which allows a plant’s roots to be directly exposed to the open air.
Lee Harrison first heard about aeroponics from marijuana growers—as he was arresting them.
It was 2010 when the police officer and his brother, Tim, began looking for ways to reduce their food bill, and provide healthy options for their father, who’d been diagnosed with cancer.
“A lot of the guys that I talked to said their marijuana was stronger because of their method, so we started looking at it for vegetables,” says Harrison (no relation to this writer, by the way) in his laid-back Alabama drawl. “Growing aeroponically makes it more potent because nutrients are absorbed quicker and oxygen meets roots directly.”
It’s not just for growing top-quality weed, however. Aeroponically grown produce is currently sold by major grocery chains, such as Whole Foods Market locations across the Midwest.
Popularized by a 1997 NASA experiment to grow plants in zero-gravity environments, aeroponic gardens can produce enormous yields—such as the 300-600 pounds Harrison’s vertical systems produce per month—without depending on weather, seasonal changes, or even soil.
As the name suggests, aeroponics allow the plant’s roots to be exposed directly to open air. This means that roots receive maximum exposure to carbon dioxide, aiding photosynthesis. Plus, without pesticides or herbicides, these systems can turn out more plants in 45 percent less time with 99 percent less water and 50 percent less nutrients, and aren’t prone to diseases that spread through large soil crops, according to NASA’s findings.
Yet, here in Santa Cruz, it is still unfamiliar—several professors and horticulturists at UCSC and Cabrillo College admitted they had never heard of it.
If it’s not yet popular in scholarly circles, what about Santa Cruz’s backyard farmers? Not so much. But with food prices soaring globally, and water resources plunging locally, aeroponics may catch on as a gardening method of the future.
Jake Kelly thinks so. Although her crop is small compared to Harrison’s greenhouse yield, Kelly’s downtown Santa Barbara Chapala Gardens thrives on just a 700 sq. ft. rooftop. Chapala even manages to grow about 400 plants a week to sell to local farmer’s markets and individuals.
“Anyone can open a farm this size. My vision is to create a model for other people to be able to open farms in the city where they want to be and make a living at it,” she says.
Kelly, who started the vertical aeroponic garden with her parents in 2012 without prior farming experience, says that not only can people now easily grow their own veggies, but pretty soon, they might have to.
California is a desert state that has always faced major water shortages, and the cost of trucking in produce from miles away is going to add up, she says.
“Why not use all the rooftops? If we turned every rooftop into a garden within the city we could be completely self-sustained,” she says.
Whether on Santa Barbara rooftops or Florida greenhouses, the variety of plants that can be grown aeroponically is impressive.
Harrison’s Gardens on Air farm in Indiantown, Florida, cultivates everything from Swiss chard to lettuces, eggplants to cucumbers; the only thing they can’t grow right now is potatoes. Gardens on Air even manages to sell to local markets, restaurants, and individuals at a lower price.
“People are paying four to five dollars for a pint of tomatoes. We sell it for almost a dollar cheaper than Wal-Mart sells it and people know that they can come out to our farm and see how we grow,” he says.
Harrison has a vision for aeroponics beyond better bargains, moving toward niche markets that can provide opportunities for returning veterans. A veteran himself, Harrison wants to train others to give back to their communities, as Gardens on Air will at their future Alabama location, by giving 50 percent of their yield to a local food bank.
From small backyard farms to large corporate endeavors, aeroponic farms have sprung up not only in California and Florida, but also in Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Illinois — most notably at Chicago O’Hare airport — and even all the way across the globe in Saudi Arabia. Easy to learn and quick to bear fruit, aeroponics could lead to a major re-thinking of sustainable growing.
