Hello there! A “not so” while ago, for a program in our school, we got the honor to visit a vertical farm in Singapore called GroGrace, Urban Farming Partners’ first vertical indoor farm in Singapore. We even got a tour by one of the directors Grace Lim (Hence the name.) So, as a subset of our program, I’ll write about it because this is likely the future of farming and we were pretty lucky to see it!
Before I start, my friend Kevin would like to be featured in my blog, forever ingrained in the archives of this tiny website. Hello Kevin, if you’re reading this, here ya go
Moving on. Day of the LJ, we had a briefing and stuff, hopped on a bus, and reached our destination at Penjuru Road. Interesting place to put an urban farm but I shall not judge for it has a great neighboring building.
Moving inside after an air shower to remove bugs, we were greeted by the, albeit unexpected, sight of a lotta levels of lettuce.
In case you’re wondering where the purple light is, they only turn it on later in the day, so I promise you it’s not that underwhelming (Sorry). Anyways, they had a lot of lettuce grown on water (AKA Hydroponics) and some other “spices?” at the side too.
These were what the plants grew on. The water was inserted into the “pores” and the plants would grow from there. There’s a whole process for it but I’m not very smart nor do I have memory so I won’t mention it all, I would like to give thanks to Ms Lim for explaining it all in great detail. Twas very interesting to learn about the art of hydroponics.
We got to touch the lettuce which was surprisingly extremely crunchy and smell some of the spices (Some of them were quite potent, like meth (Police don’t arrest me I’m innocent))
Vertical Farming requires hydroponics, which means germination has to happen another way (I bad at Science). Therefore, they use soil and seed beds to conduct germination and then they place the plants into the little pore thingies.
They have flowers too!
DEFINITELY NOT SPONSERED SEGMENT
I don’t make money out of this I promise, I’m legally obliged to tell you if I do
ANYWAYS. Of course, you can actually buy the lettuce that they farm at supermarkets for a price listed of 3.50 I think. We bought some lettuce there and I cannot lie it was actually super crunchy when we cooked it. It was actually better than normal lettuce so DONT COUNT OUT HYDROPONICS THEY ARE VERY GOOD.
It’s very good lettuce, please buy.
Conclusion
If we can derive anything from this, its that vertical farming and or hydroponics is good, gotta look to the future, don’t think it’s some off-brand expensive food, its very good and relatively cheap.
Also I like my new DSLR, its very good. See ya next time. (I’m writing this during class party, its basically free period its amazing bro)