OPCOM Farm is best known for their hydroponic technology and line of user-friendly, stylish home farming products. This post is on the whole company, what they offer to the world on urban farming, and my personal reflections on the company. I wanted to highlight the products they offer and where you might want to use them in your urban setting.
OPCOM offers everything from countertop mini farms to larger scale community farms. However, the larger the product, the larger the monetary investment. As always, it’s crucial to conduct thorough research before pooling your savings for an expensive product that doesn’t satisfy your needs. I hope this post will help you make the right decision for your personal farming goals.
Key selling points of OPCOM products
- LED lights that are adjustable for different plants
- Connected to a mobile app, allowing for remote monitoring
- Modular and attachable, so you can build your farms like LEGO bricks
- Specialized on urban farming and ergonomics around growing in the city
- Eliminate the guess work in hydroponics
OPCOM product selection
They have a great number of products for your countertop or kitchen farm. They have many types of growing machines to suit what you would want in your indoor mini farm.
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O2 Garden – $159 -
Micro Grow Dome Garden – $99
The two products above are small and simple grow pods for you counter. The micro dome is only 9.5” diameter, so it is tiny. This product is great with the humidity control with a mist generator plus an air freshener fan. The dome is amazing for really controlling an environment for whatever you want to grow or start growing.
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Grow Tank – $699 -
Grow Box NEW – $699
These are designed for larger growing crops. The Grow Tank is great for fruiting crops that need that space to really grow. The adjustable light allows these systems to grow with your plant. The Grow Tank has a 21-gallon water tank, so your plants roots will have lots of water to thrive. There is even a mesh that attaches in the middle to guide and support your plant as it grows.
The Grow Box has numerous grow sites and works with larger leafy greens, like kale. This is a great product for cultivating leafy greens indoors because it is compact and can be stacked on top of one another. With each level, you’re able to grow 59 individual plants. You can place your crops close together and thin out your plants as they grow.
The Grow Box is only 24″ x 29″ so it has a low profile and can be placed in your kitchen without hoarding too much space. You can grab the plants you need, when you need it.
OPCOM goes to the next level for those that want to turn their wall into a vertical farm! These products are really simple and actually are more cost-effective than the Grow Box for the number of plants you get for your dollar.
This Grow Wall 3 can replace that idle bookshelf or empty wall in your home. It is amazing how accessible and user-friendly this product is. It sits just under 40″ wide, 79″ tall, with a small 8″ profile off your wall.
Like most of their products, they are able to expand and connect together, so you can really have a wall of green. If you are thinking of the overall expense, after one harvest, the cost of plants is about $5.55, so in the second harvest this unit actually pays for itself. With this number of plants growing in such a small space, you and your neighbours will become great friends.
Pallet Farm
This is their newer addition to the Opcom products for growing. They have started to make their products more dense for growing. One of these products would do really well in your home or condo. They don’t take up much space but they really do pack a growing punch. This is ideal for a family as you will get a lot of fresh leafy greens from this product. It also isn’t a cheap purchase as it will go for over $5000. Again what is great about this product is how automated and interactive it is.
OPCOM also facilitates larger scale production — which community, hotels, and restaurants might opt for. Shipping container farming is something that shouldn’t be overlooked in getting us all food secure. You can read more about my ruminations on this technique in a previous FMC post here.
They offer three types of shipping container farms: one for leafy greens, strawberries, and mushroom production. At this level of growing, we could deliver ample food supply to food deserts. I also admire the level of automation and technology that OPCOM puts into their products. You will need to learn about the intricacies of hydroponic farming, but the growing environment is taken care of by the product.
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Mushrooms -
Strawberries -
Leafy greens
Updated August 16, 2021. Originally published April 5, 2020.