An Ecosystem Approach to Growing Food, Part II

We started Grove with the mission of building products that get people growing their own food, but we weren’t always set on taking the ecological route and using aquaponics as the operating system for our first product. Early on in Grove’s history, we designed an experiment to figure out which of two different growing methods would form the basis for our future product — hydroponics (an exhaustive method) and aquaponics (an ecological method).

We built two growing systems side by side. They were nearly identical — same LED lights, same NFT hydroculture channels, same fans for air flow — except the hydroponic system on the right had a reservoir which we dosed with chemical fertilizers and the aquaponic system on the left had a 60 gallon tank stocked with fish and a biological filter to convert their waste water into plant nutrients.

We planted these two growing systems with the same plants — mostly greens (lettuce, kale, arugula, etc.) and herbs (cilantro, basil, mint, etc.) — in the same planting configuration and began our experiment.

Right off the bat, the hydroponic system on the right took off. We were pleasantly surprised by the productivity and by three weeks in, we were harvesting salad greens from it every day. The aquaponic system was slower out of the gate, but we kept at it, feeding the fish and keeping an eye on the pH levels, Two months into the trial, the aquaponic system was stable and starting to catch up with the productivity of the hydroponic system.

Both systems grew great greens — the bok choy, lettuce, and collard greens were essentially indistinguishable. But the differences between hydro and aqua became clear when comparing the flavor of certain herbs — specifically the mint, basil, and cilantro. From the hydro system, these herbs had imbalanced flavors, with certain qualities of the flavor intensified, almost astringent, crowding out the subtle components of these herbs’ bouquets. From the aquaponic system, the mint, basil, and cilantro had full and balanced bouquets like you would expect had they been freshly picked from good soil in the garden.

It’s unclear exactly why hydroponic and aquaponic produce differs in flavor, but the prevailing theory is that the microbiome has something to do with it. In aquaponics, you encourage microbial colonies to form in order to process the fish waste into organic fertilizer. As this microbiome matures, the diversity of beneficial fungi and bacteria increases and starts to look like microbiomes found in healthy soil. Plants react to these microbes in their root zone by creating phytochemicals, some that attract good microbes, others that repel bad microbes. These phytochemicals combine to create the complex flavors that we taste and the aromas we smell when we chomp down on a sprig of mint or cilantro. In hydroponics, the aim is to keep the root zone of the plants sterile, devoid of the microbes that live happily in the soil, thereby throwing the plant’s natural phytochemical production out of balance.

The diverse microbiome present in aquaponic systems serves another purpose that we learned first hand.

Four months into the aquaponic vs. hydroponic experiment, plants started dying left and right in the hydroponic system. A fungal disease called pythium root rot had taken hold and spread like wildfire throughout the hydroponic system, but the aquaponic system four feet away was immune. The sterile root zone environment in the hydroponic system left the plants defenseless against the fungal disease, but the diverse colonies of microbes in the aquaponic system functioned like an immune system, outcompeting the pythium and protecting the crops from the would-be pathogen. While the aquaponic system kept growing strong, we removed the dead plants from the hydroponic system and scrubbed it out with chlorine bleach to start over again — an arduous task that made us further question the long term viability of hydroponics for the home.

After this and a number of other experiments we eventually gave up on hydroponics and took the system down to make room for more aquaponic R&D.

This experiment in the early days of Grove led us to a conclusion that informs how we think about product design and user experience. The ecological approach to growing takes more patience to get up and running, but the trade off is better food, resilience to disease and disruption, greater productivity over the long term, and a better overall experience for the grower. We chose aquaponics, the ecological method, over hydroponics because we believe in the long view — optimizing not for the first harvest, but for future harvests and the experience around those harvests.

We chose to build living, regenerative systems that you’ll enjoy interacting with and eating from for years to come. Now, we are honored to share these Ecosystems with you.