Natasha Kalas has always had a penchant for playing in the dirt. A lifelong gardener, she is most passionate about growing her own fresh herbs and vegetables. Natasha lives in Hinckley, Ohio, with her husband and two young daughters, Claire and Eve, and gardening has become a family affair. They just finished planting tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, herbs, black beans, carrots, watermelon, kale, pumpkin, peas, beets, asparagus, and garlic. In addition, they also grow blueberries.
Natasha is experienced with growing vegetables but admits she has not had much success with flowers. However, she has decided to try to grow daisies, dahlias, and Black-eyed Susans for a friend’s wedding this summer. Gardening is an excellent activity to share with your kids.
What better way to teach your children the benefits of growing food and eating healthy than to have them help you plant a garden and take care of it? Natasha is starting to teach her daughters responsibility by having them help her pull weeds and water the plants. Gardening can also provide kids with a sense of accomplishment. She recalls watching her daughter’s eyes light up the first time she saw a cherry tomato in their garden.
Living in the northeastern U.S. limits outdoor gardening due to seasonal weather. In the winter of 2019, Natasha decided to take her garden “inside” the garage and experiment with hydroponics so they could enjoy homegrown food year-round.
Hydroponics is the practice of growing plants without soil, using water, sand, and gravel. This growing technique was used by early civilizations such as the Egyptians, Aztecs, and the Chinese.
During WWII, hydroponics was used to grow fresh produce on dryland islands throughout the Pacific. During the 1970’s, NASA also experimented with hydroponics in the space program to see if growing food on another planet would be feasible.
Research on hydroponics has increased tremendously due to the demand for more sustainable agriculture. There are several advantages to using this growing technique. Since there is no soil, no land is required, there are no weeds, and there is no need to treat the crop with pesticides. Eliminating pesticides produces cleaner air, water, and soil. Water is conserved because the reservoir can be reused. Another huge benefit is that hydroponics allows food to be grown indoors year-round, in any building.
As Natasha began setting up her indoor garden, she did not take long to encounter some difficulties. She could not find a single website that provided all the information needed to grow her own hydroponic garden. While there are plenty of articles on how to set this up, there is little information available on the required nutrients and pH. levels, light intensity, water, air temperatures, and oxygen/CO2 exchange. She had to look through university research articles and even reached out to a horticulturist for this information.
Natasha also found that a hydroponic garden requires constant monitoring of lighting, temperature, and water; otherwise, the plants will die quickly. She experienced this when she forgot to check the plants one morning before leaving for work. These problems gave her an idea. What if she could find solutions to these obstacles with the help of technology?
After working 13 years as a financial planner and with two young children at home, Natasha was ready to make a change. She was already actively volunteering for several local organizations in her community. While her volunteer work was meaningful to her, Natasha wanted to make an impact and a positive change in the world her children live in.
What started as a side project evolved into EvergreenCle, which has become her full-time professional focus. She and the team at EvergreenCle are working to develop both large-scale home and commercial indoor growing systems.
EvergreenCle will provide home gardeners worldwide with the opportunity to grow clean produce 365 days a year. The grow kit will come with a complete setup that includes seeds, lights, and sensors for your hydroponic garden. Depending on the growing season, customers can purchase different plants or choose to keep what they already have.
EvergreenCle is currently designing, developing, and testing its plant studies with the help of a horticulturalist. They are building plant profiles that will guide the growing system to grow a specific plant that the user selects from their system.
They are building a secure infrastructure for the IOT system. An IoT system is the “internet of things”. This consists of sensors that transmit data through a cloud-based platform. In this case, a customer would purchase the complete growing system, register their device on the EvergreenCle website, sync their growing system with their profile, select a plant they wish to grow, and then the system takes it from there. The growing system has a tiny computer that will interact with its cloud-based plant profile to guide the plant throughout its lifecycle.
One disadvantage of hydroponic gardening is that it typically requires constant monitoring. EvergreenCle’s automated system will enable people to manage and maintain their gardens through their smartphones. They currently have a waitlist for people interested in beta testing their first design.
Hydroponics makes an indoor garden possible, and the best part is that it is GMO and pesticide-free. There is nothing tastier than homegrown produce. EvergreenCle hopes its technology can help shorten the supply chain, provide access to local foods, and spur economic development in struggling communities. Natasha says, “I hope that we enhance the growing experience, extend our growing season, and get more people excited about food, technology, and healthy eating.”
For more information on EvergreenCle, contact Natasha at [email protected]
~Christine Connell