- These herbs, oh, it
just makes me hungry! (upbeat music) - Across planet earth, we're running out of areas to grow food and we're running out
of fresh, clean water to feed those crops as well. (upbeat music) - Your biggest issue here is what? Weeds? I mean those weeds are tenacious, right? (upbeat music) It's a natural plant sweetener. There we go. - The Tower Garden works
indoors, it works outdoors. You can pretty much grow
anywhere on planet earth. (upbeat music) But what does organic mean to you guys? (upbeat music) Know your farmer, know where
your food's coming from. Grow it yourself, you'll be healthier. - You don't have to be an expert, but you can still grow your own
clean, healthy food at home. - My name is Troy Albright. I'm a pharmacist and an urban farmer. We've tried to figure out, well how can we grow our
own food here in the desert? And so as we looked at
different technologies, we realized water's gonna be a commodity and we investigated
different ways to do it. And we decided that growing vertical was way easier to do
than growing horizontal. So we can save 90%
space by going vertical, we can use only 10% of
the same amount of land. But more importantly, we're
using 90 to 98% less water. As I studied my patients, it came back to the foods they were eating were affecting their health. We're seeing a lot more
disease in our society because of the things
we're putting in our body, on our body. So I saw a chance to change
the health of my patients by providing food to them. In Minnesota, we use lots of pesticides,
herbicides, fungicides to kill the weeds, to kill the bugs. And we were told that that was
the only way we could do it. And now we're finding
out more of that exposure to pesticides what that's doing to us. And so there's a big
push to grow organically or the use without pesticides
and herbicides and fungicides. And that's our goal is to show
people how you can do this in your own condo, your own
apartment, your own house, your backyard, wherever you
have two to three square feet that's all you need. It's designed for a third grader it's meant to be kept simple. We have a reservoir that's 20 gallons that holds the water and
the mineral nutrients. The water solution contains
70 plus essential minerals and nutrients and the only
moving part is a pump. That pump pumps that water
nutrient solution up to the top and then it rains down
and it hits each pod and we get faster growth. And we can have a full head
of lettuce in 21 to 26 days from a two inch ceiling. Beautiful root structure,
you can tell the quality and the health of your plant by the roots in a beautiful bibb lettuce. Chefs come into my greenhouse all the time and they'll say, "well there's no way
you can grow enough food "in this 5,000 square feet for me." "Well how many heads of lettuce
do you grow through a week?" "Oh, 50." "Oh that's one of my commercial towers. "I have 320 towers at
maximum production in here. "So I've got one tower a week four yes? "That leaves 316 more towers
what else do you need?" So we don't realize how much more you can grow
vertically than horizontally. Look at this look at that beautiful bok choy. On the same tower we're also
growing some starbor kale. Again, I never really liked
kale until I started growing it. This is the starbor kale, this is the sweetest of all the kale. Curly kale is another name for it has a lot of flavor as well. This area, we're fresh
cutting for our restaurants. It's just so potent oregano's
just incredibly potent. You'll never have e coli on this romaine, beautiful romaine lettuce here. Nice and crunchy, got beautiful leaves. Really, really tasty. This has become one of
my favorite lettuces. The mira, you can just
taste the freshness. Green onions, oh my gosh. Just this little piece of stevia. This is what stevia looks like. Is enough to sweeten your whole smoothie. If you grow your own food,
you're gonna be healthier. And that's what we're encouraging to do. You know what's been sprayed on it, you know where it's gone through, how it's been handled. That's the exciting part
about growing your own food. - My name is Tim Blank. I'm the co founder and
chief technology officer for the Tower Garden Company. My degree is in horticulture and I had the privilege
of having a 12 year career with t Walt Disney World
Company at The Land at Epcot. And it was clear to me after
having this rare opportunity to work with food crops
from all over the world using every hydroponic system imaginable that the future of food was
growing up instead of out. Tower Gardening really gives
us an opportunity to garden in many cases where we
couldn't have a garden, indoors on your patio in the backyard and so it's really a
compliment to modern gardening. - And the automatically will fit in. So if these weren't in right, they wouldn't line up here
when snapped together. As we put these sections together, we create an area where a tube that the water is gonna come up through. So we've got our four sections that we grow 16 regular pods and then we have 16 baby green spots here. Now we're gonna put the shower cap on and everything fits nice and tight. - With traditional
agriculture unfortunately a lot of water's wasted. There's a lot of water going to places the plant roots aren't at. And then a lot of water
is being evaporated into the environment In the Tower Garden, the
water is self contained in the Tower Garden reservoir. So every time the Tower Garden waters, that water goes up, passes by the roots, the roots take the water
and minerals it needs in and whatever's left over
goes right back down into the reservoir and is reused. At maximum production I can grow close to 20,000
living plants a month in here. The only thing we can't
grow in these towers are root vegetables, tubers like potatoes and then things like
blueberries, raspberries those are tree type plants. - Plants don't need soil. What they need is what's in the soil. Gases like oxygen, water` and minerals. So really the science of
hydroponics and aeroponics is taking all those important minerals, get them in a clean water soluble format and make them readily
available to the plants. That's really the science of aeroponics. - So we're growing snap peas. Look at these snap peas here. There's tomatoes, we've got
spinach growing, strawberries, peppers there's some eggplant hanging out. Taste all you help yourself. Nobody eats the habaneros. Yeah it's got a lemon flavor. - Oh yeah I wonder why. - Yeah.
- Oops sorry. - Mint taste the mint, pass that around. - What's in the middle one again? - The red vein sorrel. When the plant starts
doing this, what's this? - Seeding or
- It's molting. - This will be very bitter. So we've harvest from this for about three, four months now. So once it gets this, you
give it to the chickens or compost it okay? Let's walk this way we're
gonna see some tomato towers. My hands are green from the chlorophyll. You find anything on here
you're welcome to pull it off. We got different types of tomatoes the more you get into your plant canopy and take the stuff out, the
bigger your tomatoes will be. You're not gonna hurt the
tower if you pull off too much. But when you start eating these things and you notice how juicy they are? I mean, when you buy them from the store, do they have juice like that? It's 'cause they've
traveled who knows how long. The bell peppers are good. When you don't take care
of your towers like this, they still produce but they
won't produce as big of a fruit. Oh look at this red bell pepper
who wants a red bell pepper? So there's different ways
you can grow with your tower. Indoor, outdoor, grow the
things you love to eat. Here's just a little sampling
of all the different seedlings that we offer. You got your flowers, your fruiting crops more of your herbs. And this is fun too. - What is it? - You'll know as soon as
you taste it, what is that? - Is that the stevia? - Stevia, did you get some?
- Oh my God. - God it's good. - So when you buy it in the store, it's in a liquid form or powder and there's always a bitter aftertaste. Why is that? - Processed? - Yep, they're extracting with chemicals. Nope, there's no bitter
after taste, is there? - No. - Natural plant sweetener. Those are actually nine
feet tall, the commercial. The residential will come
five or six feet tall, depending on if you buy the extension now. I mean you think about you've
got 32 grow spots here. So one tower can produce quite
a bit of food for two people. The home tower is designed to where it's right there in your kitchen or right there close to kitchen so you can just come and
harvest, right off it. You always harvest from the
outside and then come in. The goal is to make sure you
don't let them get so big that they start going to seed. And that's one of the biggest issues I see with people that own towers is their tower's just a big hedge. And they're like, "I don't wanna eat off it
cause it looks too pretty." You gotta harvest your produce. If you love to eat kale
and lettuce and celery, grow those things. You're gonna be so much healthier than the stuff you buy in the store. Once you try it, you'll never go back. When you're already a grower, you already understand the basics, how a plant grows. - [Man] It is just so simple. - Yeah, compared to what
you've done this is easy. You're gonna be like, why
isn't everybody doing this? - Take control of your food supply. Get more healthy produce. If you're growing food
right in your own kitchen, you're gonna harvest it every day, right? - The food's going from
the tower to your table. And I believe what Hippocrates said
years ago, centuries ago, "let food be medicine and
let medicine be your food." I firmly believe that. (upbeat music)
