The KTech Farms Origin Story
Today, I wanted to take a few minutes to share how KTech Farms got started.
Everything begins with a desire, and my desire to start a farm actually came many years ago, when I helped my grandparents on their farm in St. Louis. They had several acres and grew various specialty crops such as tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, okra, cucumbers, etc. I helped them sell produce at Soulard Farmer’s Market on Fridays and Saturdays for about eight years, and was able to help on the farm my last summer or two before leaving for college.
Fast forward a decade later and I came across the concept of indoor and vertical farming while working as a software developer for a company in Springfield. The idea of growing in a controlled environment with fewer resources and no pesticides was super intriguing. It also seemed like a perfect mix between agriculture and technology, since most of the methods I saw were much more technical than traditional farming.
Prior to actually trying the indoor farming myself, I built a couple raised beds and put them in my back yard where I started growing peppers and tomatoes. Next, I expanded to basil, squash, and cucumbers while trying out a few hydroponic mason jars inside on a windowsill to see how they did.
I was surprised with how well the mason jars did, and harvested a bit of arugula and basil from them. At this point, I added a shelf to my closet and hooked up some LED grow lights to start growing over winter. I ran out of room pretty quickly, but came across the company AC Infinity, which provides a variety of indoor growing equipment such as grow tents, ventilation, lighting, etc. Shortly after discovering them, I purchased a 5×5 tent with some higher quality lights and ventilation. With the extra space, I began growing full-size tomato and cucumber plants inside, and even added a grow shelf that utilized an ebb and flow system.
Still not content with my setup, I decided to incorporate more vertical growing techniques through the use of ZipGrow’s 5′ vertical towers. I started with four towers in the 5×5 tent and have since added an additional 16 towers in a new 4×8 tent where I’m growing basil, arugula, romaine, and strawberries. This past year was my first farmer’s market season, and although I was a bit nervous about starting, it wasn’t all that bad! After a 15 year hiatus, I ended up back where I spent my childhood.
