Plant Chat: Gabe Blanchet, co-founder of the Grove Ecosystem

I am so glad to have Gabe Blanchet, CEO of Grove, on my blog today! Gabe is the master-mind behind the Grove Ecosystem, an idea born and initially developed at MIT. The Grove Ecosystem is the world’s first intelligent, in-home garden that empowers consumers to grow their own produce year-round in a bookshelf-sized space. Using a process called aquaponics, the Grove Ecosystem is designed to help fish, plants and beneficial microbes work in symbiosis, and reliably provide the nutrients needed to grow herbs, small fruits and vegetables, including lettuces, peppers and tomatoes. Growers can monitor and control the connected Ecosystem via their mobile device and the Grove OS app. This indoor garden is set to change the way Americans think about and grow their own food.

I was so impressed with my conversation with Gabe—he is so young and energetic! Check out my interview with Gabe below!

Please tell us a bit about what inspired you to create the Grove Ecosystem. 

Two years ago, Jamie, who is my cofounder and best friend for many years, and I were seniors at MIT. Jamie worked on a research farm in West Virginia, which is a bit atypical for most of the students, who are into energy or finance. He became obsessed with agriculture as a major global problem—Jamie lives a plant-based diet. He came back from that experience on the farm and wanted to grow his own food in our dorm room. He built an aquaponics system, which took over our dorm room with plastic pipes growing food when there was snow outside. We had so much vegetation—50-60 different species. We had leafy greens, pomegranate and kiwi trees, and we were experimenting with brassicas and root vegetables. We were having a lot of fun and realized that this concept using this ecological growing method could bring fresh, healthy food to people all over the world. It was a powerful idea, and you could bring it right into your home or office. I am a MIT engineer by background, and I’ve been sort of more entrepreneurial. So this checks those boxes. It can have a positive impact, and it’s a project that’s been fulfilling for us for 5-10 years.

Tell us a bit more about the Grove Ecocystem. 

We launched our Kickstarter and basically it is what Jamie had built in our dorm room. It’s beautiful, made from sustainable materials, and it’s savvy—we put some technology in there so that everyone could use it. It’s got more efficient lighting, but it’s essentially the same thing. Overall, it’s an ecological method for growing plants in the area size of a bookcase.

It’s been two years since our dorm room epiphany. We’ve been so fortunate to do a lot. We both studied engineering, but we didn’t have too much agricultural knowledge. Since then we’ve been in greenhouses and aquaponics farms. There are lots of marijuana operations out there using these techniques, it is one crop that has supported advances in LED lighting and tight control systems for indoor farming—up to now it’s one of the only economical things to grow. Our LED lights are efficient enough to start growing crops, culinary herbs, and small fruiting crops like tomatoes and peppers without insane amounts of energy. The trend will get better.

Aquaponics has been around for awhile; there are more commercial operations and some people are doing it in the backyard. Our system is the first modern take of aquaponics in ordinary people’s lives. We think it can be in every classroom and living room. In aquaponics, biology is happening to make food. You use fish and aquatic life with beneficial bacteria, just like in soil, and plants—they each serve a part in a recirculating system, with fish waste which has nutrients mostly in the form of ammonia, which is converted to nitrate. In conventional farming, we get nitrate from petro chemicals—there are different ways to get it but plants love it. In aquaponics, it’s natural great way to get it—the bacteria convert ammonia to nitrate, there is a lot happening.

The plants grow in little clay pebbles, not soil—you can take a handful of them and there’s no residue, it’s not dirty. It has the great surface area that all the bacteria love—that’s in contrast to most hydroponics, where it is mostly as sterile as possible. It’s a little bit like eating an organic plant-based diet, where you encourage good gut bacteria.

How can this help people have access to more sustainable, healthful foods? 

I think the primary goal is to inspire and educate. While this is not a novelty, you can be eating from it every day, or every few days, but I don’t want to make exaggerated claims about the yield. The primary purpose is to inspire and educate current and future generations on ecological systems to grow foods. People are so disconnected from where food is coming from—especially urban and northern locations—they don’t have farmers market, gardens, family traditions; this is a big segment of our population. We can inspire and educate them and have fun with growing your own food and experimenting. There are tangible benefits; it’s totally reasonable to have all of your culinary herbs, such as chives, rosemary, basil, cilantro, and oregano, all growing. There are great bouquets of aromas and the system freshens our air. There is a huge benefit to having an ecosystem in a normal home. Definitely one is that having plants in living space is good for air quality, hopefully within a year we can have data on that. Having greenery and living things where you live has a proven benefit. One that is interesting is that you have a living medicine cabinet, with herbal remedies and teas every morning. I use my Grove for salads—I harvest a salad every night for myself. Jamie uses his as a medicine cabinet.

How does this compare to other home gardening projects? 

Most of the things that are available today are more novelty size—it’s great if you just want two plants, but the Grove is much bigger in terms of actual output, yield, and interaction than most of the other tools and devices out there. There are some larger units that are fantastic, but some of the challenges are integrated lights that mimic the sun and are efficient—some systems don’t have that. Ours has that. We are starting to harness the power of LEDs. These lights will power the future, they are very efficient at getting the spectrum of light to optimize for photosynthesis. No matter what else you’re doing, you can still grow your food with one of the most tightly integrated solutions, with step by step guides through a mobile app. You can use seeds that work way better, but you could use any seeds for this. We do have plants that we have in our standard recommendations for people who want suggestions and to be guided.

How much food could one grow? 

If your focus is on salad greens, you can pre-seed right into dense growth. Or you can do 6-12 herbs. The system has one main gardening bed, and underneath is a smaller seedling and microgreen tray.

What stage are you in for the development of the product?

In less than one week, we got $256,000 through our Kickstarter campaign, and we had set the goal at $100,000. It’s very exciting. The system starts at a price of $2,700.