A leitmotif here on Truly Local Farms is my love for vertical farming strategies, also known as wall farming. I often advocate this method of growing in urban settings — especially indoors — because it is perfectly calibrated to our city lifestyle, where space and resources are not only scarce but expensive. Vertical farming means growing more in less space, maximizing the produce yield in your farming efforts year-round, while also conserving water.
Today, we are going to look at a vertical farming product by ZipGrow Inc, the Farm Wall, a ready-to-use living hydroponic wall for both indoor and outdoor settings. I will be going over the strengths and weaknesses of the product, as well as offer some resources for folks who want to get started with vertical farming at home. Hopefully this post will help you decide for yourself whether this method befits your farming goals.
🪴 Learn how to turn your wall into a farm here.
What is the Farm Wall?
The Farm Wall is constructed with ZipGrow Towers, and comes in two-, four-, and eight-tower configurations to accommodate different farming capacities, ranging from $500 to $1000. According to the company, the system is lightweight and suitable for winter growing as well. The hydroponic method provides healthy nutrients for your plants, and is able to bring your plants to harvest much faster than soil-based vertical gardening systems.
📍 Where can I put my Farm Wall?
The low profile of the Farm Wall makes it a great addition to your urban farm. This farm can be placed in many places around the home inside and out, for both partial and full sunlight exposure. The fully enclosed system allows you to put it on your balcony or even on an indoor wall that receives lots of sun. ZipGrow also provides LED grow lights to supplement natural sunlight and increase the yield on your plants.
❓ What's the difference between living walls and vertical farms? The concepts between the two systems are relatively the same, but there are some differences to consider. In most cases, living walls are lower maintenance, and easier to execute than vertical farms. The latter requires more light, needs more care on nutrient levels. Learn more about the distinctions here.
Wall Farm review
👍🏻 What I like about this product
- It’s vertical! Quite obvious, I know, but the system is set to hang down from the supports above. This apparatus is great because this is where you would run your irrigation system to our plants. The height is not too overwhelming, and most adults would be able to farm and take care of all the plants without issue.
- It’s modular. With the Wall Farm, you are able to take a whole vertical section out and put it back to either decrease or increase the size of your wall farm. Fully customisable!
- Training materials. Since the founder, Nate Storey, made this system on his own after years of trial and error, his learning materials are a great resource. He also has a YouTube channel where you can get visual guidance on the system.
- Complete kit. The Farm Wall is a complete package and ready to assemble and use. It mounts to the wall, comes with instructions, and shows you how to add nutrients to the system. The system recirculates water, so it is great to reduce water waste and great for areas where water isn’t accessible.
👎🏻 What I don’t like about this product
- Not beginner-friendly. The main thing is that this is a hydroponic and aquaponic system. If you are not familiar with water-based methods, it will take you time to get to know it. I really enjoy the idea of aquaponics and how easy it is to run once set up.
- Expensive. It is not cheap, and this could really be said about aquaponics in general. Although the towers are priced at a reasonable rate, and getting an eight-tower kit for $700 USD is not bad, it is still a substantial purchase. Moreover, you need to add the water source. If you are doing aquaponics, this is a whole different ball game.
💧 Get your complete guide to hydroponic farming here.
📐 Turning the Farm Wall into a greenhouse
ZipGrow includes a way for you to scale your wall farm into a greenhouse. Of course, you need the space, but there are many backyards that can use this type of farm. They do call for a quote on what it would cost to run a farm like this, but if you have the resources for such a project and want to do a larger hydroponic vertical farm in your backyard, the Farm Wall gives you a wow factor.
Remember, by going vertical, you drastically increase the sq. ft. that you are growing on. This system really does kick-start you into being a wonderful commercial farmer. Here’s what you’ll need if you want to expand your Fall Farm system into a fully fledged greenhouse.
- 20’ × 40’ greenhouse with roll up vents
- 150 ZipGrow towers
- Automated nutrient management
- Ventilation fans
📺 Watch tutorials on how to operate a Wall Farm
The founder of ZipGrow — formerly Bright Agrotech — runs a YouTube channel, which was such a wonderful resource for my own vertical farming endeavours. This guy knows his stuff, and he breaks down complicated concepts in simple language. I would highly recommend Storey’s channel as a compendium of all things related to vertical and hydroponic farming.
If reading is more your speed, you can also check out ZipGrow’s blog, where you learn about the costs and labour one group put into making a commercial farm — maybe it will inspire you to do the same with your vertical farms!
Storeys innovation with aquaponics and scientific approach is his claim to fame. He is such a trusted name in the industry and his video is a plentiful trove of short and long videos answering questions around vertical farming. He shows you the processes he developed through his experimentation.
What’s great is that he managed to turn his own product into a business, producing the towers that he used to grow on his farm and selling them to urban farmers like you and me. Storey’s journey shows that creative problem-solving, innovative engineering, and an entrepreneurial spirit can take a farmer to great destinations.