Reap What You Sow With AKER Urban Farming Kits
April 15, 2015 by Robin Plaskoff Horton
You can picture it right? Starting your day by collecting a bounty of fresh eggs, herbs and other edibles, popping over to check on your buzzing bee hive, and then heading out to enjoy your day in the city with the unmistakable glow of a gardener.
But then, you try to picture actually making a garden bed. You begin to wonder where on Earth someone buys a bee hive. Do they have them on Amazon? You start looking at housing for urban chickens, and after an entire weekend on Pinterest, your dream of being a prolific urban gardener is dampened by discouragement.
With that in mind, it’s time to give a huge round of applause to the AKER project.
They’ve gone and put together everything you might need to easily transform your urban space into a fully functioning factory of delicious and healthy food. We’re talking a flat-pack, pre-made urban farming kit that requires no tools to put together. Easy just got easier.
AKER includes a raised planter bed, multilevel planter bed, indoor/outdoor worm composter, wall planter, beehive, and chicken tractor, each designed to make maximum use of space on balconies, rooftops and small to medium gardens.
You don’t need tools, screws or glues to put it together. And get this– the designs are open source, meaning all will be released in the public domain making them available to all to make their own.
Take a closer look at all of the elements of AKER.
The GroGrid is a multilevel, raised garden bed for growing fresh produce, aromatic herbs and gorgeous flowers. The layout adjusts to fit into a variety of spaces, and the kit includes a trellis for plants that like to climb, like all those varieties of heirloom tomatoes.
Here is the EggHaus, a two-hen “chicken tractor” for keeping chickens in your garden during the day. Your chicks can each produce up to four eggs every three days. Added bonus– I’ve heard watching chickens can be much more entertaining than watching TV shows about raising chickens.
The WormHaus is an indoor/outdoor worm composting bin. Trust me and my nose, worm composting bins are odorless and the soil they create is rich! Did you know you can order worms by mail?
The Made from a single sheet of plywood, EcoHive is a full sized top bar beehive with 25 combs. Just don’t let your swarm go rogue and terrify local pedestrians.
The GroWall is a vertical garden which mounts to the wall. Even though it doesn’t take up much space, it has room to nourish many different plants.
The GroSquare is a practical raised planter bed that snaps together in 30 seconds. And because AKER makes an effort to do everything right, they offer a buy one, donate one program. If you buy one, they will send a GroSquare to a low-income family on your behalf.
Don’t fret about the materials either. AKER Kits are made with exterior-grade, nontoxic, high quality Baltic Birch plywood. They’ve been field tested and proved themselves to last for years. Read more about AKER here.
So now the question is, what are you going to plant?
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— December 22, 2015 @ 21:34