Our Process
How We Grow
Our hydroponic setup, how it works, and why we chose this approach for growing in Charleston.
When people hear "hydroponic farm," they picture something industrial. Warehouses full of robots and blinking LEDs. Our setup is a lot simpler than that.
We grow leafy greens and herbs hydroponically. The plants sit in coconut coir for root stability and get fed by nutrient-rich water that we mix, check, and recirculate. We know exactly what the plants are getting because we're the ones mixing it.
Why Hydroponics
Charleston's growing season is long, but it comes with brutal heat, humidity, and random storms. The summer is tough on greens, afternoon rain can hammer a crop, and bugs are constant. Hydroponics gives us more control over the growing process, even with our flood tables outside for now.
The early growth happens indoors on vertical racks where conditions are dialed in. The plan is to eventually move everything under cover as we scale, but we're working with what we have and it's producing good results. For the restaurants we work with, consistency is what they care about most.
Our System
Everything starts indoors on vertical racks. Seeds go into coconut coir, which gives the roots something to hold onto as they develop. Once they've built a strong root system (usually about 10 to 14 days), they move outside to our flood tables.
The flood tables work on a cycle. They fill with nutrient solution, the roots soak it up, and the water drains back to the reservoir. It's simple, efficient, and lets us grow a lot of greens in a compact footprint. From transplant to harvest, depending on the variety, it's another two to four weeks.
We monitor pH, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and temperature daily. Small adjustments early prevent big problems later. The system is simple by design: fewer moving parts means less to break and less to troubleshoot at 6am.
What That Means for the Product
We harvest to order and deliver locally, so the greens reach your kitchen within hours of being cut. No cross-country trucking, no sitting in cold storage for a week. You can taste the difference and they last longer in the fridge.
Short supply chain, fresh product. Fewer miles between the grow room and the plate, and that shows up in the quality.
Still Learning
We don't have it all figured out. We're two guys building this one system at a time, learning as we go. Some experiments pay off, some don't. That's farming.
If you're curious about any of it, reach out. We're happy to talk about what we're working on.