Tell us a little about yourself.

James Brake is creator. I’m born and raised in Mississippi and spent a lot of time on my grandfather’s farm. Was a very technically oriented kid. Went off to travel in the world for a number of years, always stayed in computers, but always had multiple home gardening projects including hydroponics to grow vegetables and stuff when I lived in California and I’ve taken it to a new step here.

Now you’re in Hawaii, right? Are you all in Hawaii?

Yes, we are all in Hawaii.

Greg, I’m originally from NJ, after college did a lot of work in technical sales, taking an engineering degree to kind of help folks develop businesses and technological solutions and deliver those solutions accordingly, as well.

Krysta Carmack, was unable to connect without static so she types a few answers here and there.

The Growbot, is about the size of a coffee table, and what it does is it grows a salad pretty much everyday in that coffee table are size. It uses hydroponics, kind of automation for adding the plant food and adding the water, so you don’t have to think about it. You just put it in your backyard, connect the hose, you put in your seeds, and then about ten days later most of your seeds should have sprouted, so you take off the germination cups, and about 4 weeks later most lettuce is ready to start harvesting. Most of the varieties of lettuce that we recommend that you grow is the kind that perpetually grows new leaves. You can also grow kale, carrots, and other types of root vegetables, there’s an area of that as well. That’s kind of the basics of it.

The core thing is it’s very very easy to use is what I was striving for and also it’s very economical.  For getting that salad a day, plus some kale and some other vegetables on less then a dollar a day in plant food, which is just  a mixture of bird manure which is guano, seaweed, folic acid, which are all naturally sourced. Folic acid is in soil and sea water, it’s a naturally occurring substance, source for this is a mineral called leonardite.

So it’s on Kickstarter? 

It’s gonna be on Indiegogo.

I’ve been building prototypes, testing out the technology for about 7 years.

I started in California with a really big one, that my wife wasn’t happy with how big it was, it wasn’t portable. So the next one that I built, had a much smaller footprint, and was portable so if we wanted to have a barbecue or the kids want to use the backyard for kickball etc., we could easily move it out of the way and then move it back to the center of yard, where the best light was. Then we moved to Hawaii, and we built this Growbot. So this Growbot has the small footprint and we can just pick it up with 2 people and move it back to where you want it.

It’s got 7 years of work on it, multiple versions of it, looking for what worked best. This particular model, we started on it, and finished this design late last year,  actually had it completed early January, and the first plants growing in early February. We have it all documented. We haven’t had to buy lettuce since early March, kale came in a few weeks, later and that’s been doing fantastic. And we’ve had tomatoes, and cucumbers and things like that.

I love this idea because it’s going to enable people who want to grow lettuce and vegetables in the winter, could you have it in the winter, is there enough light? I guess you could have grow lights?

Absolutely. You can totally use grow lights, they are becoming much more economical to purchase and to operate, they’re called compact fluorescents, or LEDs. Both of those are pretty economical. We’re going to come up with a package to set up in a garage or another spare room that’s convenient you just have to have a water fitting so you can connect the water. We want to keep the automation cause that’s where people get into trouble, they forget to water it.

Yeah, that’s one of the problems I’ve personally had, with the models of the Growbots, that were not fully automated, was when I forgot to keep it watered.  For consistent growth you just have to keep adding the plant food on a consistent basis.

Is it a table full of water? or are they growing in dirt?

It’s a mixture of water and perlite.

So you just get the seeds, put the seeds in it and it does it’s own thing?

Well the seeds are the miracle. Put the seeds in coconut core pellets inside these little net pots that barely touch the water, the water wicks up, the seed gets wet, it starts to grow, 5-10 days later you have a little plant and depending on the plant, you can start harvesting. most of the miracle, is inside the seeds, we just give it a place to live.

Krysta typed in you can use any medium you want, it doesn’t have to be the perlite.

It doesn’t have to be perlite, we haven’t tested it with the coconut core, but the core technology with the water and feeding it lends itself to have a lot of different things. Some plants do better in pure coconut core, and some do better in something that’s more moist like peat, so it depends on the plants that you are growing, you might have to test it.

Greg: For the crowd-funding campaign which we are launching on Indiegogo, folks will be able to pre-order a Growbot, we have the prototypes ready to go, the agreements with manufacturers, we’ve got  everything in place, and the crowdfunding campaign will give people the opportunity to see the Growbot, get their questions answered, to understand more about it, and effectively pre-order their Growbot. We’re targeting a delivery of spring 2016 for grow Growbot. People will be able to pre-order theirs and encourage to share with all of their friends. We will reward referrals and people will effectively be able to earn their own Growbot.

Kind of like network marketing.

The Growbot is intelligent, it’s a full computer inside the coffee table, what that computer has is a series of maps,  that allow it to recognize plants, once it identifies a plant it will then be able to give it the proper amount of nutrient. Then what’s cool is, it’s also a community effort, so as more and more people get to using the Growbot. Every time the Growbot doesn’t recognize a picture, it can upload it to our servers and we can look at that picture  and say woah, what is that? Then as we have 1000s of that picture we can train the computer to recognize it. Then once we have enough pictures of that plant, then we can upgrade all computers at once, and all the Growbots will be upgraded will all know how to grow like Bok Choy for example.

Like Gogi berries, because somebody said I’m growing Gogi berries, and I bought a Gogi berry plant at the farmer’s market and I have no idea what to do with it, and I haven’t had time to research it on the internet, so I stuck it under an apple tree, and it gets a little shade from the apple tree and when the apple tree get’s watered it gets some water.

Greg: That’s exactly what we want people to do, be able to experiment, and learn without having all that gardening knowledge. There’s too many people out there that would love to have organic produce within steps within their kitchen, but they don’t have the time, or the ability or the knowledge to do so. So we really want to be able to provide that organic fresh food, for people who might not be able to afford it or who have mobility problems, and that’s really what we’re accomplishing with this.

So I’m wondering will I be able to grow avocados, or lemons or things I couldn’t normally grow?

Those bigger plants, won’t really fit the big plants. Avocados might be a little big, I won’t  stop people from trying I love avocados, do have an attachment, like I’ve been growing sweet potatoes, they grow really well inside there. It’s a good system to grow extra potatoes, strawberries, a full range of plants. I’ve tried to grow melons but here on the island we have fruit flies. I continue to try I just want to have more melons.

Christy Wilhelmi on Garden Nerd podcast posted this great homemade fruit fly trap that’s easy to make.

Also there’s an app that goes with the Growbots. So if you’re like a lot of people, quite busy, and you’re at work, you can actually get a picture of your Growbot, so you can check to see what’s going on with your Growbot.

There’s also