Today we’d like to introduce you to David Stevens.
Hi David, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing your own food isn’t easy for most of us, and I wanted to change that! So I created the iHarvest Indoor Garden. It’s an automated garden that will grow 30 or more plants in only a few square feet of space. It does the vast majority of the work for you with automatic watering and feeding, and because it’s hydroponic it will grow food a great deal faster than typical outdoor gardening methods.
I always loved gardening, especially growing my own food. But living in apartments for most of my life, the opportunities to grow my own food were sparse. I would occasionally be able to grow small amounts of food in a windowsill or on a small balcony if I had one, but it wasn’t much. Space was a problem, and so was getting the proper amount of sunlight.
In my last apartment, I actually had enough space to purchase a large, raised garden bed. But alas, it received two hours of the brightest sunlight imaginable every day and was in the shade the rest of the time. I was able to get my lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, and other veggies to start growing, but eventually they’d just become stunted, turn brown, and die.
Eventually I realized I wasn’t alone with these problems. I did some research and recognized just how many people wanted to grow their own herbs and vegetables, but lacked the proper space to do so. And while we’re quite fortunate here in Southern California, in most areas of the country you can only grow outdoors for a few months a year.
So, I decided I would do something that would allow myself and others to grow LOTS of food, anytime of year, no matter where they lived.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No, it hasn’t been easy. One of my favorite sayings is that “we do these things not because they are easy, but because we think they will be easy.” I think it’s pretty common for entrepreneurs to think that with a little intellect and elbow grease they can make almost anything happen. But developing a gardening system that’s attractive enough to use in your living room, is automated, easy to assemble, and can grow 30 or more healthy plants isn’t easy. But I kept iterating and iterating until I had something that I felt would look like a piece of art in people’s homes. And that became the iHarvest Indoor Garden.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My day job is actually working with energy storage and renewable energy. It’s incredibly rewarding to work with new technologies that also happen to be healthy and sustainable in both of my careers. And because of my work, I was incredibly careful to make the iHarvest super efficient. The system uses only 86W of power when everything is turned on, including the lights and the pump. That’s less than many old lightbulbs, and the result is 30 plants that are busy soaking up CO2 to grow and provide food that doesn’t have to be shipped halfway across the world after being sprayed with nasty, inorganic pesticides. I’m very proud of this, and definitely view my careers as net benefits to the world that we live in.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was always interested in science. It was my favorite subject. I wanted to know how everything worked. And also, like most of us, I grew up with the understanding that keeping our environment clean and healthy would be essential to our happiness and health on this earth.
Building the iHarvest was exciting and figuring out ways to design it so that it could carry 14 gallons of water, automatically feed your plants every day for a week or more, and would never leak was actually a really fun and interesting challenge.
Pricing:
- The iHarvest is $899.99 – But we will be having some incredible sales for the holidays!
- The uHarvest is $129.99 – And we will also be offering some great sales during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and after
Contact Info:
- Website: https://igworks.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indoorgardenworks
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IndoorGardenWorks
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwVywYccMXuVpdacleS3Nqg
Image Credits
Many of the photos shared are customer photos from our Facebook group where gardeners grow together.
