IFA 2024: Turn Your Windows Into An Urban Garden With Balconyfarm's Duo

If growing your own food has appealed to you, but you lack the outdoor space, Balconyfarm's Duo lets you bring your garden inside. The forward-thinking Korean company Balconyfarm has a way for urban-dwelling folk to harvest fresh produce within steps from their kitchens. In an exclusive interview with House Digest, Balconyfarm CEO Sung-Woo Kim stated the motivation behind their vision. "In the beginning everyone had a garden, but with megacities, it was too dense and with these high-rise buildings, we lost the gardens. We want to bring it back to the people." The Balconyfarm Duo may be the key to creating the perfect indoor garden.

With the Balconyfarm Duo, apartment dwellers can grow up to 32 plants right in their windows. This high-tech setup makes the most of space and cuts energy waste. However, the Duo's take on indoor food production goes way beyond what we've seen before. Sensors detect the plants' growth stage, water and light requirements, and any nutrient deficits. In response, the Duo doles out what your seedlings need through self-watering and fertilizing, as well as artificial lighting that works in concert with natural light. To top it off, you can monitor these natural and technological marvels on an app.

The Duo is much more than an indoor garden. Most similar products are hydroponic, but this invention does its best to recreate an outdoor growing situation. Plants grow on a capillary mat that mimics soil. This mat holds the plants in place and helps regulate aeration and water uptake. The Duo mimics nature in other ways; its watering function follows rainwater patterns, and its ventilation feature helps with leaf transpiration.

Along with the benefits of having fresh fruit and vegetables close at hand, part of Balconyfarm's mission is to improve interpersonal relationships by sharing both the growing process and the edible bounty. However, the planet may reap the most obvious and measurable benefits. Without the heavy fuel consumption from conventional agriculture, packaging, and shipping, the Duo can be part of your climate-conscious gardening efforts. Balconyfarm reported promising data from their 2022 lettuce harvest; the company saw significant financial savings as well as reduced carbon emissions over traditional lettuce farming. One of Balconyfarm's most noteworthy innovations is that the company starts seedlings using waste energy from steel production.

Another energy-saving aspect of the Duo that elevates it over other indoor gardens is its lighting system. Since the units are meant to be next to windows, they don't rely heavily on their included bulbs. Instead, the Duo creates an ideal mix of artificial and natural light to provide the plants with the best possible illumination.

While there are a good number of fruits and veggies you can grow in a house or an apartment, as of now, Balconyfarm's offerings are limited to a selection of herbs, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, but their selection may grow over time. The company starts these seedlings with the help of a steel manufacturer, repurposing leftover thermal energy and delivering the young plants to you, ready to nurture in your own window garden.