WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI – I did something outrageous a few months back. I am embarrassed to tell you about it because it is so outrageous and …. Embarrassing.  I went  to one of those expensive organic produce markets. I won’t tell you the name of it but it rhymes with Old Foods – fair nuff?  I decided to go to the hot food bar and get some sides and I really don’t remember what I ordered but I got a sandwich from the cutting board too. I grabbed a big thing of sparkling water because it was cold and looked delicious and I even grabbed a bowl of cioppino too. Now granted, that’s a pretty hefty lunch, but when I got to the register I was flabbergasted to find out it was almost $40 bucks. – Eh… SCRATCH THAT, won’t be doing that again.

In fact, I haven’t been back there again since.  Sure I go in there for one or two items but I never make myself at home there anymore and get comfortable. Ever since that experience I am constantly looking at different prices and making sure that I am not going to go over and pay through the nose. That was a pretty startling experience but little did I know there were going to be others down the road but not from that place. No, I was done with the price gouging for a while. The real jolt was going to come from a place known as Mexico.

I was on a health seminar down in Nashville when I heard about this one. Apparently there was a e coli outbreak in cilantro and it was the most disgusting story I have yet to come across. I didn’t catch all the details but the speaker  on the mic mentioned that human waste was found in a cilantro field along with toilet paper. That was it for me I didn’t need to hear anymore details but that freaked me out. The containers to hold the produce was also contaminated and the farm was shut down.

The conversation took another turn two months later when the popular Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle reported some e coli in their food. I didn’t know how serious this stuff could be on the human body and I didn’t want to find out first hand. The mere nature of it seemed ugly and gruesome. The symptoms alone are enough to make you freak out. These include abdominal cramping, extreme gas, vomiting, unrelenting fever, severe diarrhea, bloody stools, and this can go on for as long as four days. Without the proper hospital treatment you can actually die from it. You want to think about that for a minute.

The speaker got into some other areas of interest including the whole, “Organic Produce” thing. This didn’t turn out to be such a great deal after all. I learned that up to 35% of that produce is really pesticides and in fruit it can go as high as 65%. I learned that most of our produce is weak and void of any nutrition. The worst part was you had to eat up to 15X the amount of any one thing in order to get any value out of it. The land that the food was grown on was stripped of nutrients to begin with and just about all of our food is imported from other countries. This is grim stuff man.

By now I am in a state of panic and I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I know that if I go crawling back to the organic produce markets I am going to pay thru the nose. That wasn’t sounding very good to me and I knew I had to find another answer. I had read somewhere in the Wall Street Journal that one of those places was fined after an investigation by the Department of Consumer Affairs.

INDOOR GARDENS: A Smarter More Efficient Way To Get High Quality Food

The attention shifted to Indoor Gardens and I could breathe a big sigh of relief. This is an indoor / outdoor gardening growing system that you control from start to finish. You get to know what kind of nutrients goes into the process and watch over the whole growing cycle. Nobody touches these plants except you, the grower, and the produce it makes is of better quality than what you get in the high priced markets. The best part was that you get to know you are growing clean food.

This looks like a space age contraction and it stands about 6 feet tall. It is white and has holes in it for plants to grow. There is a cage around it that has special growing lights. But what is really impressive about it is that the amount of food that this thing produces. Now I am totally captivated by the whole thing because of the sheer nature of this thing. It is impressive. I find out that it is an aeroponic growing system that just uses air and water to create fantastic produce. This thing doesn’t use any soil. It is a very clean growing system that gives you total control and there are no need for pesticides. You can grow this inside or outside of your home and it is very easy to do.  I understand that some people from NASA were behind in it’s development.

I am reminded of TV segment I saw as a kid on Disney’s, “Mouse Factory”. The focus on was on Epcot Center which was very new at the time. The segment said something about this type of growing system being the way we will get our food from the future. I remember seeing a slanted wall with little pockets carved in it and plants sprouting out. I was mesmerized by the whole process and I wanted to know more about it.

Skip ahead to today’s presentation….  I’m on board.

So I did some digging around. You can see the pictures I took on this page. I met some people who have these incredible tower gardens and actually got a closer view of what these things were all about. I even tasted some of the food grown on them. The differences between tower garden food and what you get in the store are night and day. The cherry tomatoes I tasted were very fragrant and very lush. They were tasty too – I mean, they actually tasted like something fresh. You can taste the subtle hints of sugar and the tomato skin has a pop to it. And when these were picked in front of me I could smell them and I was a good 12 feet away. I also noticed how abundant these plants were because there was a lot of produce that came from them.

But it’s not just tomatoes… Indoor Gardens can produce a wide array of produce including lettuces, melons, basil, swiss chard, herbs, juicing greens and so much more. I have seen people get three of them and each one will serve a different purpose for juicing, salads, and cooking. The best thing about this process is that there is zero pesticide used in the growing process. A friend of mine explained that if you used simple marigold plants around the towers that it will keep the bugs away.

Now here is something that you have to remember when it comes to buying organic food. The food that you get in the grocery store is picked when it is green, (before it can ripen) and it is radiated and covered in pesticides. This is a horrendous thing to contemplate if you are on the road to good health and nutrition. A lot of things that you wouldn’t dare do to your food is being done by the big corporate food companies. This is something that you have no control over. But If you had a say in this process you would, no doubt, do something about it. Now, thanks to this system, you can not only have an equal say but play an active role in how all of this will shake out. You are the winner on the entire process.

So how much does all of this cost? It is actually pretty cheap and you don’t have to be a green thumb to be successful at this. Even if you can’t take care of houseplants this new tower garden growing system is literally fool proof. If you are concerned about not being able to create sprouts from the seeds you can buy mini versions of the vegetables and herbs online. You can have these small sprouted plants sent to your door so you can just plop them into the holes on your tower garden. It is virtually fool proof.

Not a whole lot of people know about this believe it or not. Hydroponics have topped the headlines as far as being the most popular growing format and has over shadowed aeroponics. The difference here is that it involves more growing medium, (soil, pebbles, etc.) and you have to deal with PH, fans, extensive lights and the lighting equipment here can be very pricey. In fact, some of the lights I have seen can go as high as $800 each. The ventilation systems are also high cost. The tower garden approach is a fraction of the combined costs. You can get started with a growing system for roughly $250 flat. When you compare that to a typical shopping trip to the organic markets you will find that this system will pay for itself.

The quality of this food is most interesting. The lettuce grows to enormous lengths. You can literally make an entire salad out of one leaf. You might be able to feed a whole family just from a few leaves. The more you pick the tower garden the better off you will be. You see the food has the tendency to grow right back again. One of my friends decided to go against the manufacturers’ advice and get three tomato plants instead of the recommended two. The result was 1,000 tomatoes. My friend had more tomatoes than he knew what to do with. In such a case I would recommend that you make marinara sauce, tomato juice, and have tons of salads. You could basically switch over your diet to being mostly plant based. Many people who go this direction do just that. With all of that basil that this thing produces you might want to figure out how to creatively apply pesto.

This is a fantastic system. There are alternatives to the big food giants and it is time to make health your number one priority.