From Countertop to Classroom

We had just set for sale our New Micro Farm ONE countertop farm and I was showing it to our esteemed colleague Dr. Nasrine Abushakra whose family owns a chain of schools in the MENA (middle east north africa) corridor. We immediately had a kodak moment and quickly settled into an educational configuration for our Micro Farm ONE unit. 

We are shipping out multiple units to be used at their Universal American School in Dubai. Our educational Micro Farm ONE unit includes the countertop unit which is now the teacher and demonstration station. The proper setup of the farm can be actively demonstrated to the class from this and ensuing discussions will then revert to the 10 student farms which are in the same black trays that are housed in the master unit. The master unit will allow students to check their progress visually with the teacher station as reference. The active student farms have clear humidity domes to help with germination of the seeds.

Pictured in our units is the germination tray at the far left which has a dark cover to allow proper germination. The middle tray is where the germinated plants first green up and the last tray on the far right is the grow to harvest tray. Each of these trays were spaced 4-5 days apart, so you would germinate first in the far left tray. Once the seeds sprout and grow to about 1" or so in height, the tray can be moved without the cover to the middle position where you would allow light to hit the new leaves and green up the plants. At this point you would start a new tray of seeds and put them in the far left with the cover over them. Finally in another 4 days it will be time to move the trays over again and germinate another tray. By using the same variety of seeds, the timing on the movement should be pretty uniform and simple to coordinate.

The new educational Micro Farms will be priced at $150 when introduced and will have the master teachers unit, 10 student Micro Farms and the growing media and seeds for 2 full crops to get started. We will also have available refill units so you can reuse your farms. Plasic grow trays and covers are made from recycled plastic bottles and growing media is sustainable coir based while our seeds are Non GMO and organic.

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Additionally, we are working to integrate data collection through common social media applications and group discussion on web based discussion technologies. Final data analysis and presentation will also be introduced to allow the development at the class level to then integrate all of the other classes in the school with a look towards creating a cloud based platform for experiments. Should be great fun. 

We are working to incorporate LED lighting on our new ONE+ units that should be coming in the next few weeks. Keep an eye for our posts to keep abreast of the expanding line of new Micro Farms.