Allison interviews Renata Scorsone from Plantaform about their innovative smart home garden that uses fog to grow plants.
Plantaform has a minimalist modern design that fits into your home decor. It comes in black or white and is shaped like an egg about 30″ tall with windows on the sides for viewing the progress of your plant growth.
Plantaform uses fogponics to grow plants, an advanced form of aeroponics that uses an ultra-fine mist to deliver water and nutrients to plant roots. This highly efficient method allows for better oxygenation and nutrient absorption compared to traditional soil-based and other hydroponic techniques.
Pantaform’s intuitive app makes gardening accessible to everyone. It guides the user through each step of the growing process from seeding to harvest.
Plantaform provides Plant Pod Packs which are pre-seeded cartridges specially designed for the Plantaform garden. Users can select from leafy greens, to herbs, to tomatoes to customize their gardens based on their culinary preferences and nutritional needs.
Learn more at https://plantaform.com
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Transcript of Interview:
Allison
I found some plants at CES and I had to stop and talk to Renata Scorsone from Plantaform?
Renata Scorsone
Yes, that is us.
Allison
What are we looking at here? We got a big dome, a big egg. This is an audio and video podcast, so you’re gonna need to describe it in detail.
Renata Scorsone
Okay, no problem. So this is what we like to call the future of indoor gardening. It is the world’s first indoor garden to use fog ponics, which sounds kind of weird, but basically what that means is it uses fog to grow plants instead of water or soil.
Allison
So misting it all the time?
Renata Scorsone
Exactly. So it’s got ultrasonic foggers in the bottom. It is a dome-shaped, egg-shaped device that is fully enclosed, which allows us to be very water efficient because it recycles that water and uses 98% less water than traditional gardening methods and actually 30 to 50 percent less water than even an aeroponic system, which is where it’s spraying the plants.
Allison
Oh wow, that’s amazing. You’ve got a bunch of lettuce growing in there right now?
Renata Scorsone
Yeah, you can grow up to 15 different plants all at the same time in this device. So we’ve got three rows of five. We do have curated pod packs with very specially curated selections of pre-seeded, non-GMO seeds.
It’s just like an espresso where you scan the pod pack, you put it in there, and the app does everything for you. It knows exactly how much light to give it, how much nutrients, and how much water, and it even reminds you when it needs watering, which, because this is so water efficient, it only needs to be watered every two to three weeks.
Allison
Oh my gosh, that is amazing. So what I see is a door on the side. Is that where you access to get the food out?
Renata Scorsone
Actually, no, it is a fully enclosed garden. So whenever you’ve got all the windows on, it does dim the light a little bit so you don’t have these bright LED lights glowing in your house. Some people find that a little bit bright from time to time.
So we’ve got these tinted windows on it that not only dim the light and give it more of an ambiance, kind of a sophisticated elegance to your house—like a living piece of furniture—but it also helps us control the humidity and make sure that we’re very efficient on the water usage as well.
Allison
So you’ve got to have those windows on to keep the fog inside, right?
Renata Scorsone
Yeah, but the fog doesn’t fall out that bad anyway, so it’s totally okay because the fog is being delivered to the roots through that root chamber that’s in the center column. So it’s getting to the roots before it falls out and cascades down, which makes it look beautiful as well.
Allison
Okay, so it’s not fogging the tops of the plants, it’s fogging the roots?
Renata Scorsone
It’s fogging directly to the roots and it’s delivering that water and the nutrients directly to the roots in an oxygenated environment. So what that does is it grows the plants a little bit faster and provides much more consistent yields because the roots aren’t sitting there and potentially rotting in water.
Allison
That’s what I was saying about that. Yeah. So this would be great for an apartment where you can’t have an outdoor garden, or maybe you live in a desert where it’s really hard to grow things outside.
Renata Scorsone
If you live in Canada like us, where we’ve only got a very short growing season, this works really great for Canada as well.
So you can have something like cherry tomatoes growing in the middle of winter with some basil and some nice beautiful lettuce.
Allison
There you go, there you go. So this just won the CES Innovation Awards for food and ag tech, I see.
Renata Scorsone
Yes, we did. We’re very excited. That’s our new best friend you’ve got sitting there on the table.
Allison
There you go. And so, oh, these are—are these the plant pod bags? I’ve got some cherry tomatoes and greens.
Renata Scorsone
Yeah, a little basil, a little bit of lettuce in that one, and we’ve got a few different selections. One of them—our most popular—is the cocktail mix. People love that one.
You grow the herbs that you want to put in your cocktails because, you know, herbs—you kind of buy them, you end up throwing them out. This is also helping reduce food waste, which is one of the core values of the company, right?
We want to make sure that the food is hyper-local, pesticide-free, and you’re eating it as you need it—not buying a bunch and then having it go bad in your fridge and then throwing it out.
Allison
You’re not going to get any fresher salad than this. I was going to be making a caprese salad right here. I get some mozzarella, I’m good to go.
Renata Scorsone
Exactly. This is the one I’m growing at home right now. I showed you my app—that’s the one that’s going to show up on it.
Allison
Oh, so it’s app-based, too, of course, so you can watch your plants grow.
Renata Scorsone
Yeah, so I can even pull the app up for you. I have a picture of my kids there, but there’s the Plantaform app.
Shows what you’re growing, and because this is connected to my one at home, you see that I’m growing the cherry tomato mix. It’s been growing for 32 days, and I need to water it soon.
Allison
Do you manually water it, or does it know when to water it?
Renata Scorsone
It tells you when to water it. It waters the plants on a consistent basis as needed, but you have to refill it every two to three weeks.
Because we’ve got five liters in the bottom and two liters in the top, you just lift this up, fill it.
Allison
Oh good, we got to see the fog.
Renata Scorsone
Yeah.
Allison
Well, there’s the roots.
Renata Scorsone
There’s the roots there, and we’ve got the water at the top. And there’s also a container at the top. This is an extra reservoir. Let me turn that around for you. So you can put water and nutrients at the top as well.
Allison
That is so cool. Now, is this available yet?
Renata Scorsone
Yes, it’s literally launching today in the U.S. So it is available at plantaform.com to purchase right now.
Allison
Plantaform.com. I’m sorry. And what’s your price point?
Renata Scorsone
What do you think? What do you think it’s worth?
Renata Scorsone
It retails for $499 U.S.
Allison
That’s actually not bad. That sounds great.
Renata Scorsone
Everything you need for your first harvest, including a lettuce pack. So you get 15 seeds, you get the nutrients, six months of nutrients, and everything you need to grow your first harvest.
Allison
That sounds fantastic.
Renata Scorsone
Thank you very much for dropping by.
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