Vertical farming at home is a great way for you to grow your own food. Whether it be inside your house (indoor) or in your garden (outdoor), it allows you to produce vegetables and fruits independently, year-round, and on very little space. In fact, having your own private food supply is one of the greatest things that you can happen to have.
Of course, there’s a lot to consider before you start vertical farming at home. You will need to condider the costs and what type of vertical farm you need. Listening to relevant gardening podcasts helps a lot get to speed when it comes to vertical farming at home.
Not sure if vertical farming is the right thing for you?
Here’s a useful guide that explains everything you need to know about vertical farming at home and its benefits, costs, and types of plants you can grow.
What is Vertical Farming?
Instead of growing vegetables and other foods on a single level, such as on a field or a greenhouse, vertical farming produces foods in vertically stacked layers commonly integrated into other structures, such as houses, skyscrapers, shipping containers or repurposed warehouses. So they are literally stacking plants above each other, most of the times in the form of shelves like in a grocery store.
This vertical setup allows you to grow your own food no matter how limited your space. You don’t even need to have a garden to poduce your own food anymore, as there are devices for indoor vertical farming at home too. It’s thus possible to grow multiple plants at the same time without the need of much space.
Yet, vertical farming is so much more than just stacking plants and hoping for the best. The practice requires artificial control of temperature, light, and humidity to succeed. If a one of these variables is not maintained, it can happen that your veggies won’t survive.
Luckily, being a perfect example for a green innovation, vertical farming is using a modern technology called “Controlled Environment Agriculture” (CEA), which will help you to adapt to the specific needs and requirements for each plant. CEA gives you full control over variables such as light, water, and temperature and increases your yield by ~70%, while at the same time reducing your water bills.
Vertical Farming Benefits
There are more than enough reasons why you should start vertical farming. In fact, there’s more to vertical farming than just having more crops.
Here are the main benefits of vertical farming at home.
1. Saving Space
This is the most obvious benefit of vertical farming. Because of the vertical nature of the stacked layers, vertical farming takes up much less space than tradtional ways to grow your food. For example, depending on which crop is grown, one acre of vertical farm could consistently grow the equivalent to between 10 or 20 soil-based acres. Literally everyone can start vertical farming at home, even those that don’t have a large garden or yard.
You can basically let your plants grow everywhere in your home. Whether it be in your kitchen, living room, or on your balkony. And for those who have a garden, vertical farming at home allows you to even grow more food than you need for yourself and your family, so that you can even sell fresh vegetables and fruits to your neighbors.
2. Saving Water
It’s not only that vertical farming saves space, but it also saves a huge amount of water. Because water is recycled and every drop of water is going to where it’s needed by the plants, less water is wasted and needed in the first place.
In comparison to established farming and gardening methods, vertical farming at home is known to save up to 95% of water. This is again thanks to the vertical layout of the plants. Any excess water that a plant cannot absorb will drop down to the plants below. That way, there is basically no waste of water, making it a perfect example for saving water at home.
3. Reliable Year-Round Food Production
Another major benefit of vertical farming at home is that it allows you to grow plants, no matter the environmental conditions. Whether it is sunny, humid, or rainy, it doesn’t matter to your crops, meaning you can achieve a consistent year-round food production without worrying about the impact of adverse weather conditions.
Farming in a protected, well-monitored and managed environment brings you assurance and peace of mind, and provides repeatable programmable production.
By eliminating the effects of mother nature, there’s no such thing as a ‘seasonal crop’ and you won’t suffer from losses as you try to push the production windows of ‘seasonal cropping’.
Ultimately, vertical farming at home allows you to grow more food, with less space, water, and maintenance required, and thus inceases your food output to a maximum. It’s mindblowing how much food you can produce with so little effort and space!
4. Environmetally Friendly
Indoor vertical farming at home can be good for the environment because it massively reduces the amount of fossil fuels needed for farming equipment which is not required to sow, fertilize, weed or harvest crops.
Vertical farming also helps to improve biodiversity because it does not cause land surface disturbance, which helps the natural animal population which lives in and around farms to thrive.
Just imagine how much less space would be needed for agriculture if everyone would start producing their own food at home. Since agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, areas that are used for fields today could then be rewilded and given back to nature. This is a perfect example of something we could do to save our planet while not having to give up on our current lifestyle.
Additionally, when managed correctly, you don’t need to use pesticides or other chemicals to grow food in a vertical farm. Ultimately, this leads to food which is better, healthier, safer.
5. Encouraging a Healthy Diet
Vertical farming at home makes you think differently about what you eat. Since you are investing time into researching and growing your own food, you are motivated to eat healthier and live a more sustainable lifestyle.
Let’s say you went through the whole process of planting and growing your own vegetables, such as cucumbers, tomatoes, and salad. Now as you have them ready to be harvested, you will think about what you can use them for and research for heathy recipes.
Thanks to the organic nature of vertical farming at home, you can als be confident that there were no pesticides or other chemicals used in the production of your vegetables.
6. Educating about Food
By being present in your and your family’s day-to-day life, vertical farming at home makes you constantly think about food and how it is produced.
Today, many kids are thinking that food comes from the grocery store. They aren’t properly educated about what happens with the food before that and what is needed to grow their food. Isn’t this sad? There are many reason why we need more environmental education and food is definitely one of them.
Food is our most important resource as we need it to survive. However, we’ve lost the awareness about it’s importance. Vertical farming at home can reverse this trend and can be used to educate ourselves and our kids again about what it takes to have a nice lunch or dinner and how this affects our environment.
Finally, as it educates about food, vertical farming increases people’s awareness about the value of food and also raises attention to the problem of world hunger, to which vertical farming is a perfect solution for as it could generate a tenfold increase in global food production. This could lead to a point where no human being needs to suffer from hunger.
Vertical Farming at Home Costs
So now let’s get into the numbers!
The costs of vertical farming at home depend hugely on your budget as well as on your needs and goals. Furthermore, the costs will also vary depending on whether you want to go for indoor or outdoor vertical farming. There are many different options available, serving different purposes and having different advantages as well as drawbacks.
One thing that is for sure though is that, the more you spend on your equipment, the more money you will save when running your vertical farm at home.
We’ve summarized the two main costs (equipment costs & running costs) and the different options below, so that you can get a better understanding about the costs of vertical farming at home.
Nevertheless, no matter which option you choose, you will definitely save on green grocery shopping in the long-run.
1. Equipment Costs = Fixed Costs
Option A: The Cheapest
You can get beginner equipment for vertical farming at home for as little as $50 and sometimes even cheaper. Though, invest some time in product research to avoid buying something that falls into pieces after only a couple of weeks. Check which types of materials are used and whether a system is ready to carry heavy weights. Most gardeners underestimate the combined weight of plants, soil, and water.
Option B: The Most Value for Money
If you want the best value for your money you should go with something slightly more expensive though. You should be ready to pay between $250 and $400 to get a decent vertical farming system for at home, which should last for decades of usage.
Also, a great way to save on fixed costs while still getting high-quality equipment is to search for used gear that is still in good shape. In fact, there is a big market for this as many gardeners are trying out different types of vertical farmin gear and sell their old one for relatively cheap prices.
Option C: The Pro-Setup
If you are ready to take it serous and willing to invest even more, you can totally do so. For example, if you want a fully automated system that controls all variables, such as water, humidity, temperature, etc. be ready to spend $500-$1.000. Also, in case you want to go with a vertical faring system that is more “luxurious” and that you can place, for example in your kitchen, you need to be prepared to spend around $400.
Though, no matter which kind of equipment you choose, it is a one-time investment, and once you have all necessary equipment, you can start growing your own produce straight away.
2. Running Costs = Variable Costs
Of course, just buying the equipment is only one side of the costs to run a vertical farm at home. However, the running costs heavily depend on the type of equipment you have.
If you went for a cheap beginner option, it is likely that you won’t be facing any running costs except water expenses. However, these cheaper system are usually nothing more than big, vertically stacked flower boxes and have not much to do with vertical farming itself, for example because they often don’t include circulation of water. Thus, they will require more water in general and work not as efficiently.
On the other hand, if you’ve got a more expensive and automated vertical farming system, you are going to save heavily on water expenses. Nevertheless, in that case you need to be prepared to see an increase in your energy bills as the system will require electricty to control for variables such as water, humidity and temperature.
Finally, although vertical farming at home takes up much less space than traditional patches and you can probably spare a bit of space for it anyway, you should still factor in any additional costs you might have in regards to space, only if applicable of course.
What Can You Grow with Vertical Farming?
Vertical farming cannot be done with all plants, although with plenty of them. Nevertheless, something that always works are vegetables. With the right vertical farming equipment, you can practically grow any plant you like. Especially those plants that prefer high humidity levels or more light exposure than the average plants.
Below are some of the most ideal vertical farming plants:
Vertical Farming Ideas
- Lettuce
- Spinach
- Kale
- Bok Choy
- Chard
- Herbs
- Tomatoes
- Chillies
- Brocolli
- Mints
- Chives
- Basil
- Bell Pepper
- Collard Greens
- Microgreens
- Aloe Vera
- Succulents
- Strawberries
How Does Vertical Farming at Home Work?
Vertical farming involves stacking several layers of plants on top of each other to grow more plants while using less space. That’s it for the basic part.
However, vertical farming involves so much much than that, as it is using modern technology to make the process of growing your own plants at home even more efficient and convenient at the same time. This is done by so-called “Controlled Environment Agriculture” (CEA) devices, which automatically optimize the environmental variables according each plant’s needs.
The following are the most important environmental variables that CEA can control.
Lighting
The light demands of plants growing in tiers will be different than, for example, plants growing in the sun. Some plants won’t get enough light because of the way the layers are built, while plants at the top of the structure will receive more light than they require. The CEA technology can help with that.
The amount of light the plants receive will be controlled by a separate lighting system for each layer. Depending on the plants you cultivate there, you may regulate the lighting for particular layers. This means that you may retain the light exposure for the plants in layers 5 and 8 at normal levels while increasing it for those in layers 1 and 2.
Watering
CEA technology pays special attention to watering and offers a wide range of alternatives. Vertical farming is all about water efficiency since irrigation of garden plants wastes a lot of water. Here are several possibilities for watering your vertical farm.
1. Aquaponics
This type of watering system involves fish to create a small natural and circular ecosystem. The fish fertilize the water, which is beneficial for the plants’ health. In return, the plants filter the water for the fish, creating a balanced ecosystem. Though, this system only works for plants that can grow in water.
2. Aeroponics
This watering system directly targets the roots of the plants, which eliminates the need for soil. Narrow pipes are placed below the roots of the plants in each layer. These pipes are spraying a mix of fine mists and water, including lots of nutritents, directly onto the roots of the plants. The benefit of aeroponics is that this type of watering system for your vertical farm at home is very little as compared to the other systems as no heavy soil is required to grow your plants.
3. Hydroponics
A hydroponics system is the most common, cheapest, as well as easiest watering system for vertical faring at home. Especially when starting off with vertical farming, this type of irrigation system is highly recommended. It works in a similar way as aquaponics. Usually the plants sit in a nutrient rich pool of water. But rather than having fish swimming around, nutrients are added artificially and the water is kept circulating constantly. This needs to be done as it prevents stagnation, bacteria, and algae buildup.
4. Manual Watering
Of course, you don’t need a dedicated water system when vertical farming at home. Especially if you have cheaper type of equipment having the water systems above doesn’t even make sense. This type of watering works the same way as you water your other plants and flowers. The only thing you need to do here is to water the top plants and let the excess water drop down into the lower layers. Just make sure that all plants have had enough water after doing so.
A smart way to get the watering correctly is to use a gardening app which has an automatic watering schedule included as a feature. This way, you can get notified on your phone when it’s time to water your vertical farm.
Other Variables
Next to lighting and watering, CEA technology is able to control for these additional environmental variables to make your plants grow even faster:
- pH Levels
- Humidity
- Temperature
- CO2 Levels
- Humidity
FYI: Depending on whether you build your own vertical farm or if you buy ready-to-use vertical farming at home devices, you will be able to automate most of these variables by using the above mentioned Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) technologies. So basically, you don’t need to worry about anything once you’ve set up your small vertical farming system. Just watch the food grow and harvest when ready!
Vertical Farming at Home Equipment
The equipment you will need for vertical farming at home heavily depends on your needs and goals. However, if you want to start a basic vertical farm, you will need:
- stacked shelves or buckets
- watering system
- temperature control
- artificial light system
- growing medium
You can even keep it simple in the beginning and only start with stacked shelves as you can manually water the plants too.
Here is an additional tip: You can first cultivate your plants in a mini-ecosystem so that they can later grow bigger and more productive in your vertical farm.
Is Vertical Farming Sustainable?
Yes, vertical farming is as sustainable as farming (and growing food in general) can get.
Just think about how much natural land is being lost to huge agricultural fields. 80% of the Amazon rainforest is alresady lost to agriculture, with an additional 5 million acres that are being cut down every single year to feed the world. In addition, we are currently loosing large parts of agricultural land due to desertification caused by climate change.
Soon enough, the human population will reach the number of 10 billion. How are we supposed to feed all these people? Well… One thing is for sure: Traditional farming mehods won’t be able to cope with the increased demand for food. Thus, with all its benefits, vertical farming is a great solution to world hunger, not only in the future, but even today.
Furthermore, by eliminating wasted water, vertical farming contributes heavily to water saving initiatives by reusing a nearly all water involved in the growing process.
Ultimately, when coupled with a supply of renewable energy, vertical farming whether done at home or on a large scale, is a true example of the circular economy.
Conclusion
Vertical farming at home is not hard to do, very cost-effective, and can be done everywhere, no matter how limited the space! In fact, it is easier than any other form of growing food as you are provided with modern technology that can automate nearly all processes for you. The costs of vertical farming will depend on what type of equipment you have, but it will always be cheaper to grow your own food instead of buying it in the grocery store. Finally, vertical farming is a good solution for ensuring a sustainable future food supply and solving world hunger.
