Japanese Home Gardening Pod

Japanese Home Gardening Pod Lets You Grow Vegetables Indoor

By Spooky on April 29th, 2016 Category: News

Many of us living in tiny apartments can only dream about growing vegetables in our own backyards, but thanks to Foop, an ingenious home gardening pod developed by Japanese company C’estec, we can now grow veggies in the comfort of our own home.
Foop (a combination of the words ‘food’ and ‘people’) is a small-size hydroponic agriculture kit that allows users to grow plants in water instead of soil. Its designers claim that you can use Foop to grow small crops of popular vegetables, including lettuce, arugula, basil, parsley or shiso, all of which can be raised from seeds and will develop faster than non-hydroponic plants.
The elegantly-designed wooden frame of the Foop is is produced by craftsmen from Hida, in Gifu Prefecture, one of Japan’s most famous woodworking regions, but the device also comes with a clear acrylic cover that lets you check the progress of your crops. There are no buttons or switches visible on the Foop, because all the settings – temperature, humidity, light, water levels, etc. – are done via a smartphone app. The Foop will also regularly send notifications regarding the state of your indoor garden and alert you when the crops are ready to be harvested.

C’estec designed this gardening pod for people living in crowded cities like Tokyo who lack both space and extensive gardening knowledge, so it’s really simple to use. The compact device houses a set of moisture-rich sponge pods in which you plant the seeds. After that’s done, all you have to do is pair the Foop with your smartphone and you’ll receive a prediction of how long the plants will take to fully grow. Gardening enthusiasts can also alter lighting, heat and humidity via the dedicated app.

To ensure plants have everything they need to grow at an optimal pace, Foop relies on a number of built-in features, like LED lights, environmental regulation fans, CO2 sensors and a small hand pump for feeding air to the water. And just in case you’re not the kind of person who checks phone notifications every five seconds, the device features a small LED screen that can display 20 different statuses regarding the state of the plants. Once they are fully grown, all you have to do is open the clear cover, slide out the trays and help yourself to some home-grown veggies.

Foop will be officially launched in September, but C’estec has already started taking preorders. You’ll have to fork out ¥38,800 ($360) for it, but you should probably hurry and preorder, as the initial launch batch will aparently be limited to 100 units

So now you can grow your vegetables indoor, you can raise bees for honey indoor, you can socialize on the internet. Soon you won’t have to leave the house at all, and when you do, you’ll probably just hop on yourWalkCar instead of actually walking. Technology, man, you gotta love it!

Photos: Foop/C’estec

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Japan’s Answer to Radiation: Massive Natural Indoor Farms

Can earthquakes and tsunamis put the Japanese food producer down? Apparently not. Sanriku Fukko National Park now hosts the world’s largest indoor farm. It was built inside an old, 25,000-square-foot semiconductor factory and uses 100 times less water than an outdoor farm. What’s more, they claim that their produce contains 8 to 10 times more beta-carotene and twice the vitamin C, calcium and magnesium as its outdoor-grown counterparts.

The produce grown at this weather-resistant, climate controlled plant uses LED lights and can yield over 10,000 heads of lettuce per day! With examples like this it is easy to see why indoor gardening or urban green-housing is expected to grow from a $30 million to a $270 million industry by 2020. With solar power, the cost to produce organic, non-GMO foods could be lowered even more. This trend is also likely part of a new high-tech, non-GMO, organic farming model that is more sustainable, and can ensure food sustainability in even the most climate-challenged locales.

Another Japanese farm is located in the basement of a high-rise building in Tokyo. It uses hydroponics to grow a variety of flowers all year long.

The Japanese government plans to promote indoor gardening as a way to create jobs and aid in food security. Officials will offer incentives including low-interest financing and a capital investment tax credit. About 40 indoor growing facilities are already in operation nationwide.

More than 150 national disasters have struck Japan in the last 30 years, largely due to their position over tectonic plates. The Fukushima incident is just the latest, and most egregious tragedy. But other places in the world have witnessed challenging if not equally devastating occurrences that threaten their food supply.

California has experienced the worst single-year drought in all of history, affecting the production of fruits and vegetables not just within the state, but across the US. Colorado and Texas have faced similar droughts but they are not responsible for growing 68% or more of all produce for the entire country.

What’s more, Africa has seen no improvements in food shortages in the cultivation of GMOs, even with the promises of biotech.

India once cultivated farms that yielded incredible grains and legumes that were full of nutrients, but reports are that food shortages loom there as well.

Water conservation, lowered costs, immunity to weather patterns, and the ability to grow all manner of food from micro-greens to bananas without chemical pesticides and fertilizers are all boons to the growing indoor farming model.

This article was written by Christina Sarich 

How to make your own food box

Miniature Real Food Konapun

The word Konapun means (according to Google’s translator) “of this starch.” I assume that perhaps a better translation would be “made of starch” but I’m not quite sure. Here is the Japanese word Konapun: こなぷん.

The starch in this case is starch powder derived from seaweed. More specifically it is called alginic acid or alginate.

The kits come with multiple packets of starch that are all chemically different so that when you mix them with water and work them into the food item they are supposed to look like, they really take on that look amazingly well.

For the items that look like they are frying in oil, the “oil” includes citric acid which interacts with the alginate and forms tiny bubbles which simulate a frying effect.”