Chicago is home to hundreds of urban farms and gardens, growing fresh produce for communities in need. Some are nestled in public parks, while others are maintained by neighborhood organizations, but only a handful resemble the urban farm operated by the nonprofit organization Plant Chicago. The entire farm is housed inside a renovated 20th-century firehouse. Just inside the door, a stack of wooden cubes arches over a doorway between two rooms, interconnected with a web of tubes that carry water from cube to cube. Suspended in water, bathed in eerie multicolored LED light, a tangle of vines spills over the container's edge, its leafy tendrils nearly reaching the ground.
While hydroponic farming has long been used for food science experiments, researchers have increasingly begun to explore whether it could be the next big thing for urban agriculture, condensing all the benefits of an outdoor urban garden into a more efficient, less wasteful indoor space.
Hydroponics is especially well suited to urban environments where land is scarce because it can happen almost anywhere that has access to electricity and running water. Plant Chicago's renovated firehouse is located in Back of the Yards, a Chicago neighborhood known as a historic manufacturing hub that's faced disproportionate levels of industrial air pollution. Yet inside the firehouse's concrete walls, snap peas and tomatoes are sprouting faster than Weber can keep up with them. One massive planter, which houses several thriving aloe plants, has been going strong for eight years, they said.
Read more at Sierra