Hate Gardening? This Gadget May Change Your Mind
For everyone out there who has seen their fair share of brown, crispy palm leaves, petal-dropping orchids and sad, wilting herbs — this post is for you. We’ve found a planter that is going to make your house look less like Miss Havisham’s abode and more like your own little personal secret garden. And don’t worry, your plants only rely on you for one thing… to plug in their new Modern Sprout planter.
Hydroponics, often associated with gardening of the puff-puff-give variety, is going straight-laced. We’re talking herbs (the ones you cook with) grown in a minimalist flower box. You can forget all those exposed tubes and ugly plastic containers that hydroponics have been associated with in the past. This little pretty comes in four finishes, including weathered gray, glossy white, reclaimed wood and, our personal favorite, chalkboard. You can either go with a plug-in system or better yet, solar-powered options.
Hold up. It gets even more eco-friendly here. Hydroponic gardening uses 80% less water than your average soil-and-watering-can methods. And all you have to do to make your garden grow is — depending on what you’re growing — plug in the planter, refill the water tank every two to four weeks and set the timer on your Modern Sprout to water between two and 17 times per day. The planter takes care of keeping the schedule.
After listening to friends who would either bemoan their failed indoor herb gardens or wouldn’t even take a hand shovel to a pot because they feared their lack of knowledge would lead to the demise of an innocent stem, creators Nick Behr and Sarah Burrows went about trying to figure out how to make carefree countertop cultivation that fit into their concrete jungle life. This lead to a Kickstarter campaign that brought in about $80,000 in just a little over a month.
It should be noted that Nick and Sarah live in Chicago, which, we don’t need to tell you, is either sweating-through-your-T-shirt hot in the summer or freezing-your-tatas-off-under-your-Canada-Goose cold in the winter. In other words, it’s not the easiest environment to grow fragile herbs in.
But flash forward to today, and Jessica and Nick refer to their house as a “culinary jungle.” Not only do they have a crop of herbs to cook with, but they’ve been growing cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, kale and more in every windowsill in their place. And we’re not talking low ROI. The couple claims to have harvested several hundreds of cherry tomatoes off of one plant last year.
If you’re feeling inspired to grow your own, head over to their website and pick up your own pretty little planter for $129-$219.
Ready to do some Modern Sprout gardening? Plant your comments below!
