Indoor Gardening With tinyFarm, Everything you Need to Know

Imagine this: 

You are living in a condo in the city with no backyard or patio. Suddenly growing plants or a garden is out of the equation.

That was the case until modgarden came around! 

You look for ways to start a mini indoor garden to grow greens and herbs, but you run into another problem–you don’t have good lighting and the small growing systems cost an arm and a leg. 

You think, “So much for my garden.” Sigh, and head out the door ready to spend a small fortune at Whole Foods for your organic lettuce mix. 

For plant parents and garden enthusiasts, this scenario happens all too often. And in a time where local, organic, and healthy foods are at utmost importance to maintain a strong immune system, we knew we needed to do something. 

After our own founder’s health transformation growing his own nutrient rich greens, he got to work founding modgarden and tinyFarms so everyone could feel empowered to grow their own food in the comfort of their own home no matter the conditions, at an affordable cost. . 

tinyFarm is an indoor growing “system” or appliance designed for home, workplace, and school use.

The tinyFarm is a self-contained organic, modular vegetable appliance and soil, seed, consumables bundle designed to work in harmony, growing a variety of living vegetables, such as:

• Leafy greens
• Microgreens 
• Herbs

Whether you are new to growing, handy with indoor plants, or a talented urban Gardiner, we offer a unique combination of hardware, software, consumables, and education suitable for everyone to get started growing healthy and nutritious food quickly and easily.

Hold on to your seats because we are about to tell you everything you need to know about tinyFarm!

modgarden is Making Pure Food Affordable and Accessible!

The idea of tinyFarm came to fruition when our founder, Aamar Khwaja, struggled for years with strange symptoms in his body until one day, and he decided that enough was enough while moving to Toronto.

After continuous research, Aamar realized that the symptoms were caused due to a lack of minerals.

Related: We’re modgarden. This is Our Story.

Aamar stated that he designed tinyFarm, “So people don’t have to go through what I did, and that people can be interested in pure, nutrient-dense, healthy food they can trust.”

Our tinyFarm was explicitly designed for people with no previous experience growing food or plants of any kind: 

• Simply insert our tinySoil block.
• Overlay the seed cartridge.
• Fill the water reservoir, and you’re all set! 

The LED lights have been designed to mimic the real sun, and our water sensors measure soil humidity levels. Both will go on and off automatically as per your tinyCrop needs.

Now, what exactly comes with the tinyFarm kit?

When you buy a tinyFarm, you are getting the complete appliance. That’s nearly a ‘plug-and-play’ set-up that includes:

• Soil blocks
• tinyPods
• Seeds

The Soil and seeds arrive separately. They are currently not packed at the same plant as the tinyFarm facility to maintain absolute purity.

We have built tinyFarm for people who see the benefits of soil-grown food and are willing to try growing their leafy greens and herbs year-round.

Before the arrival of tinyFarm, you will have the opportunity to choose from four different subscription programs:

• Microgreens only
• Leafy Greens only
• Microgreen and Leafy Greens
• Kitchen Herbs only

With our subscription service, you’ll be receiving a set of seeds every month.

tinyFarms Allows You to Grow Nutrient Dense Food Indoors 

Gardening is a hobby of growing and cultivating plants. This habit relieves us from stress and gives relaxation to the mind.There are two types of gardening–indoor and outdoor. 

Climate, light, and soil quality significantly affects  plants to grow indoors or outdoors. 

Indoor plants need a controlled climate while indoor plants grow inside where the environment is held, and the atmosphere is manipulated to suit the plant requirements. Indoor plants will absorb the air around itself, meaning that your plant will cleanse your living area.

However, since they are inside, they lack a connection to the soil food web and may not receive the appropriate amount of light to produce thriving, nutritious plants. 

On the other hand, outdoor plants can withstand climate changes, can grow in open air, have access to water tables or rainfall, and are directly connected to the soil food web and lighting that makes them the best for our bodies. However, many people don’t have access to the space, soil, or sun to reap the immense benefits of growing outside. 

Aamar states, “For us who experience an extreme climate, like the cold of New York,  the smog of Beijing, or the heat of Dubai, need an alternate way to grow if you want to take control of your food. While we agree we cannot directly replicate the sun and outdoor conditions, we can come close and at least grow healthy food at home.”

With that in mind, the team at modgarden spent an immense amount of time to design tinyFarms to support indoor growing in a way that mimics a kitchen appliance. That way you can grow as much nutrient-dense food as possible, as easily as possible. 

Lighting

The tinyFarm has built-in LED lights we use that are specialized for growing plants.

We’ve worked with a grower who produces lights for the best plants. The light recipe is patented and provides the plants with an optimum lighting recipe full or broad-spectrum. The meaning has all the visible colors of light, as well as some invisible color bands.

When we designed the LED light to replicate the sun as much as possible, we also mimic the daylight hours.

Plants are living beings just like us, and there is a benefit to see more red in the morning, and as the sun rises, it becomes whiter and then reddish again when it sets. So do our lights.

Watering

Since indoor plants don’t have access to rain or water tables, indoor plants need proper manual watering to ensure they survive. 

But how many of you have killed a plant by over watering, then to kill another because you didn’t water it enough? 

Trust us, we’ve been there too.

Indoor plants are more susceptible to watering issues since they don’t have drainage or a constant source of water. It takes a lot of practice and intuition to get watering just right, so we wanted to take the guesswork out for you. 

tinyFarm is designed to be as easy to use as possible and will automatically water your plants for you based on soil humidity levels and your plants needs. 

All you need to do is refill your tinyFarm every 10-14 days.

Yup, it’s that easy. 

Maintaining the Soil

Plants get all their nutrients from the soil. 

A soil deprived of nutrients creates deprived, unhealthy food. 

But proper soil preparation and maintenance is complex and time-consuming. Constant mulching, fertilization, and testing is required to make sure soil nutrients don’t diminish throughout the course of a plant’s life or in between repeated planting. 

The soil for indoor plants especially needs more maintenance since the soil isn’t connected to the environment, which is more self-regulating. 

We knew getting tinyFarm’s soil just right was going to be the most important piece of the puzzle. After doing years of research and development, we’re proud to say we believe we got it right. 

The perfectly balanced formula ensures your plants get the exact nutrients it needs for you to thrive. 

tinyFarm Can Grow a Nourishing Garden in Just Two Weeks

Some might ask, how much crop would be grown per month by the tinyFarm?

The answer is, it depends on what you’re growing.

At modgarden, we recommend a combo of herbs, microgreens, leafy greens in our growing program.

Here are a couple of examples of crop yield for each type:

• You can grow microgreens from 7 to 14 days. That means, on average, you can eat a serving of microgreens from tinyFarm daily.
• If you grow herbs, which on average, take about two months to mature fully, you may begin harvesting them once they are fully grown. Once they are fully grown, you may gather them daily for months.
• The other primary type of greens are leafy greens, and they fall somewhere in the middle, where you can get daily servings every few days.

But, how much can be grown?

•  Microgreens, you can have, on average, at least ONE servings daily, and in most cases, even more!
• For Leafy Greens – You can harvest ONE serving every week.
• For Herbs, you can harvest ONE serving DAILY (after the plants are fully grown).

Leafy greens usually take about 4-weeks to grow. Microgreens usually take about 2-weeks, while herbs range from 4-6 weeks to produce. 

Once the plants have generally entered into their growing phase, they are ready for harvest. Microgreens and leafy greens are best (from a nutrient perspective) to harvest in their growing stage. 

It’s a good idea to note that waiting too long can affect plant nutrition and taste, especially if they start to flower where then can turn bitter.

The best vitality (i.e., available and absorbable nutrient density) is when the plant has entered the harvesting stage.

A Farmers Market Right Out of Your Kitchen 

When you buy organic food from the grocery or supermarkets, you are not able to investigate important information about how your food was grown, such as:

1.  What were the inputs into the soil that grew the food?
2.  Was there any fertilization (organic or not) or pesticides? Both of these, while they may vary in strength or vary molecularly, are chemicals. If you’re using a chemical basis to grow food, the plant will lack nutrients and lack its real benefit to your body and health.
3. How long since the produce was harvested? If it’s more than a day, plants start losing nutrients the minute they are harvested.
4.  Were the farm and soil used to grow the produce using correct biological regenerative practices? 

If the farm doesn’t use the correct biological soil, then the plant will never have the nutrient profile of food grown in tinyFarm and tinySoil.

The benefits of using tinyFarm and tinySoil together:

• Food is grown right in front of you. No one else touches it, minimizing pathogenic issues.
• Food is harvested at the time you wish to enjoy it, maximizing nutrient benefits.
• Food is grown biologically – without any compromise – maximizing the nutrients and, ultimately, the benefits to your body.
• You know exactly where the soil came from and where the seeds came from.
• Food grown in tinyFarm/tinySoil tastes fantastic! Take a taste challenge and let us know if you find better tasting veggies anywhere else. They taste wholesome, full, juicy, flavourful, and feel pure and clean when you eat them.
• Because the food is grown biologically, it means the nutrients are more readily available to your body, so you’ll feel full faster.
• The food is at your fingertips and on-demand, not at risk from the grocery store and after lengthy truck deliveries.
• Because we use a positive impact on the environment, using tinyFarm is suitable for the climate. Getting field chemical-based grown food trucks for miles with various preservation techniques is detrimental to the environment in countless ways.

Bring Back the True Organic. Invest in modgarden!

Most people are not eating well OR living healthy lives due to chemically grown food that doesn’t provide bioavailable nutrients. 

Our current agrisystem produce takes up to 10 days to reach the grocer from the farm, each day diminishing its nutritional value while each step adds another pair of hands to your food as it approaches your kitchen.

The current system means between thirty to fifty pairs of hands touch your food before it lands on your table, which is a concern in an age of airborne illnesses like COVID. 

So what now? 

We at modgarden are looking to raise seed funding to launch in Toronto before we scale our mission! 

How can you join the future of indoor gardening?

Invest in modgarden on Title3Funds!

We would LOVE for you to explore the campaign page, ask all the questions.

Together we can make tinyFarms not so TINY.