A FOODIE’S HOME ECOSYSTEM Grow your food from the comfort of your kitchen

A significant downside of apartment life

is the lack of great outdoor living spaces. Balconies have potential, but uncovered they are no place to be in bad weather. And sometimes mega-city living comes sans outside space at all. To remedy this, start-up company Grobo has developed an app-controlled indoor gardening system that allows anyone to grow plants inside a home.

Grobo systems house plants in a completely enclosed space, with no risk of the enclosed plants becoming victims to pests.

Construction of aluminium, plastic and Canadian hardwood with LED lighting, ensures that the planting space is beautiful, yet functional. It’s designed to maintain practicality, while at the same time displaying the plant without any compromise of the closedloop system.

Grobo offers a home to a wide array of plants. Herbs such as chamomile, flowering plants such as orchids and fruit-bearing plants such as strawberries or dwarf lemons are ideal candidates. The system also comes with a specifically designed app that will manage plant progress using a preloaded and optimised growth plan. Besides monitoring a plant’s growth, users have the option to adjust the pre-loaded growth plan manually.

Budding indoor gardeners can choose from a range of add-ons. These includes specially developed nutrient capsules for strong plant growth, carbon filters for odour control and a unique coconut growing medium to reduce the risk of soil-borne pests.

Grobo is currently in the funding stage and the company hopes to ship the first batch of systems in April next year.