Skip to main content

Farm to table is easy with the Cick & Grow Smart Farm in your kitchen

Old MacDonald had a farm, and you can, too — without buying up lots of land. If your gardening ambitions can’t be contained by window planters, but a full-on farm doesn’t fit your lifestyle, there’s a happy medium. You’ll be able to have your produce and eat it, too.

Cick & Grow, a maker of automated indoor home garden technologies, is making home-grown produce easier to come by. The company currently offers smart herb gardens and smart flowerbeds that grow with “zero effort” on your part, according to the company’s website. Thanks to the its own proprietary nanotech Smart Soil growth medium, ultra-efficient LED grow lights, and electronic precision irrigation systems, it won’t matter whether or not you have a green thumb. The plants are automatically provided with the ideal amount of water, light, and nutrients, enabling them to grow more efficiently.

Click & Grow Smart Farm
Click & Grow Smart Farn

Currently in the works are Click & Grow’s Smart Farm and Smart Mini Farm, which will bring higher yields to families, restaurants, and even the pharmaceutical industry — without pesticides or GMOs. Additionally, they will use up to 95 percent less water relative to traditional farming methods, according to the company. If you don’t want such a hands-off approach, you’ll be free to customize your plants’ growing parameters through a mobile app.

The Smart Mini Farm is, of course, smaller than the Smart Farm. Where Smart Farms will be available in two sizes (with either four or five shelves), as well as customizable shelves, the Smart Mini Farm will come as a kitchen cart with two trays that can grow up to 30 plants each. You’ll be able to grow delicious kale, lettuce, tomatoes, chili peppers, strawberries, peppermint, and more. Priced at $299, it will be an affordable way to increase the amount of fruits and veggies in your diet.

Click & Grow Smart Mini Farm
Click & Grow Smart Mini Farm Click & Grow

“[The] Smart Mini Farm … is going to revolution the way everyday people get their food,” said Click & Grow CEO Mattias Lepp in a statement. The company announced Wednesday that it has secured an investment from Y Combinator, a San Francisco-based venture fund, and will participate in the fund’s three-month program before bringing the Smart Mini Farm to market. Click & Grow hails the product as the first to allow consumers to “easily grow enough fresh produce for an entire family, priced under $300.”

The Smart Farm will launch for retail in 2016. No date has been released yet for the launch of the Smart Mini Farm.

Editors' Recommendations

Stephanie Topacio Long
Stephanie Topacio Long is a writer and editor whose writing interests range from business to books. She also contributes to…
Do Arlo Essential cameras require the Arlo Smart Hub?
An Arlo Smart Hub on a wooden table.

Arlo makes some of the most popular smart home cameras. They're reliable, easy to install, and supported by platforms such as Apple Home, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa. Many of its best devices fall into the Essential family, which includes the Essential XL, Essential 2K, Essential Indoor 2K, and Essential Video Doorbell.

Alongside these products, Arlo offers something known as a Smart Hub. This is available in two formats (Ultra Smart Hub and Pro Smart Hub), and both make it easy to connect your Arlo devices to the internet. But do you need an Arlo Smart Hub to use Arlo Essential cameras? Or can you get them online without purchasing the secondary hub?

Read more
How to prevent your Ring smart camera from being hacked
Ring Indoor Cam on a table.

Ring smart cameras are remarkably popular. The lineup includes a variety of indoor and outdoor cameras as well as an industry-leading catalog of video doorbells. However, the cameras aren't without their faults. A few years ago, a class action lawsuit was filed claiming that Ring hadn't done enough to protect users from hackers -- allowing them to gain unpermitted access to video feeds.

Digital Trends reached out to Ring about these old hacking incidents. Here's what they had to say.

Read more
Echo Show 8 vs. Echo Show 10: is the bigger device a better smart display?
The Echo Show 10 on a kitchen counter.

Amazon has an impressive roster of smart displays, but few are as popular as the Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 10. The Echo Show 8 is now on its third generation, offering an HD display and a small footprint that's great for most homes. The Echo Show 10 is also on its third generation -- though it's much larger than its sibling and comes with a few exclusive features.

But is the bigger smart display better? Both products share much of their spec sheets, and it's not immediately evident that the Echo Show 10 does enough to deserve its hefty price. Here's a look at the Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 10 to help you determine which is best for your needs.
Pricing and design

Read more