Tim Blank Of Tower Garden: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Easy access, if you can see your garden, and it’s not far away, you’ll be inspired to harvest from it every day.
As we all know, inflation has really increased the price of food. Many people have turned to home gardening to grow their own food. Many have tried this and have been really successful. But others struggle to produce food in their own garden. What do you need to know to create a successful vegetable garden to grow your own food? In this interview series, called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food” we are talking to experts in vegetable gardening who can share stories and insights from their experiences.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Tim Blank.
Tim Blank’s Horticulture degree from Valencia College and career as Chief Horticulturist for the Land Hydroponic Greenhouses at Walt Disney World Company led he and his wife, Jessica, to start Future Growing in 2006. Future Growing’s mission was to make vertical farming and fresh local produce available to all. To make this happen, the Future Growing team identified the Tower Garden technology as the best vehicle to accomplish the mission. Today, Tim serves as Chief Technology Officer of the Tower Garden division of The Juice Plus+ Company.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”?
I would love to share that! I grew up in rural North Dakota, during the 70’s and 80’s, and watched small family farms disappear. As our society lost small family farms, we also lost community, and small towns became ghost towns. I also witnessed how difficult it was to grow in such extreme environments and how hard the American farmer worked. They had so many risks each season. These experiences during my childhood had a great impact on how I viewed the world. Growing up in God‘s country, I gained a great appreciation for nature, the environment, and the land we all steward as human beings! In high school, my family took their first ever vacation to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. We had an opportunity to do a one-hour backstage tour in the hydroponic greenhouses at the land pavilion at EPCOT. This turned out to be my favorite experience out of all of the Disney theme parks because it was actually real, they were growing over 100 food crops from around the world with every hydroponic system imaginable, and it was the future of food! I mean imagine someone coming from my background with all the difficulties of farming and gardening in the harsh environment of North Dakota, and then seeing how simple growing food could be by utilizing hydroponics under controlled environment greenhouses year-round! To me, this was the future of food and it solved almost all the problems and risk associated with agriculture. I was so inspired by this experience; I went on to get a degree in horticulture and greenhouse management and then went to work at the very place that I inspired me in the fall of 1993. I first started as an advanced intern with a six-month contract. I then spent the next several years learning and working in research positions in all the various horticultural disciplines including, plant pathology, entomology, plant nutrition, and biotechnology. I also held research positions with NASA, USDA, and the DOE, right there at Disney World, in the land hydroponic greenhouses! The NASA research was probably my most favorite as I always dreamed of going to space. I thought creating systems that would feed astronauts was extraordinarily cool! I was promoted throughout the years and eventually went on to become the manager of the hydroponic greenhouses at The Land. It was during that time and the early 2000’s that I began to see how interested people were in what we were doing. We inspired our guests. Many of them would ask, “How can I do this at my own house? How can I do this on my farm? How can I do this in my school? How can I do this at my church? How can I do this within my community? How can I do this at my restaurant?” What I learned is that we, “Disney” were inspiring people with the future of food, but we weren’t really providing the guests any real tools to grow hydroponically when they left Disney. This in part became the inspiration to start a company that would help people grow food the way we were doing it at Disney, but in a much more simplified way that would be duplicatable for one single person, all the way to a large acreage greenhouse. My wife Jessica encouraged and inspired me to start a company focused on designing and installing these various hydroponic systems for a wide range of clients. So together we founded a company called Future Growing, with one simple mission: every single person on earth should have access to clean, healthy, nutritious food right in their own home! Jessica has a landscape architecture degree from UC Davis and was pivotal in helping us to design and implement all of the extraordinary rooftop projects, greenhouses, and first of its kind projects in the world! She is an extraordinarily skilled drafter and designer, and together she could put my ideas onto paper for our clients to fully understand. Jessica and I grew and built our company during the Great Recession, one of the most difficult business periods in modern history. In the early days of our company, we worked with many hydroponic systems. The more we worked on projects in urban settings, the more we realized that the future of food was growing up, not out. In other words, vertical growing was the future! I worked with many of the first vertical systems at the land, and just knew that this was the way to go. We acquired the exclusive distribution rights to the Tower Garden in 2008, and then began the tedious work of helping further develop the technology, along with an entire support product line for the technology both residentially and commercially. Overtime, we created an entire plug-and-play hydroponic system that would show up at your doorstep with everything you needed to grow all of your own fruits and vegetables at home. The most important part of the package was probably developing the world’s first one size fits all hydroponic fertilizer. It was a hydroponic plant food that was perfectly balanced for all crops with an emphasis on human nutrition, which was and still is traditionally ignored with hydroponic fertilizers. The nutritional quality spoke for itself in the aroma, taste, and extraordinary production that we got from the Tower Garden! This was later clinically proven by the University of Mississippi. My wife Jessica and I soon realized that we needed a partner to help take Tower Gardens around the world! Global distribution was key. I built a commercial tower farm greenhouse for Dr. Jan Young who lived in Eustis, Florida. It turns out that she had been a lifelong partner for the Juice Plus company. Once Jan showed the Tower Gardens to Juice Plus’s founder Jay Martin, both he and his team were completely blown away by the technology and wanted to acquire it as soon as possible! Juice Plus’s corporate mission statement was “inspiring healthy living around the world.” They couldn’t imagine a better product to help them do that! In May of 2011, Jessica and I sold the rights to the Tower Garden to the Juice Plus company. Tower Garden is now a very important part of the Juice Plus product line.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
The most interesting thing to me is watching the perfection of the universe unfold before my eyes! I’ve seen this play out so many times throughout my life. I always believed in doing the best job possible! I always told my team, create one successful farm, and 10 more will unfold! The farm we built for Dr. Jan Young in Eustis, Florida impressed the Juice Plus corporate leadership so much that they wanted to buy the technology immediately! And these are guys that know farming, as they have their own farmers all over the world growing the extraordinary produce that goes into the Juice Plus products! To me, this beautiful story is so interesting because you could not have planned it more perfectly if you tried. The universe just unfolded with perfect timing.
You are a successful leader. Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
There are so many, but if I had to pick three, passion, work ethic, and having a trusted partner to keep you in check on your journey. As for passion, my connection with nature has always been deep and spiritual for me. All I’ve only wanted was to empower people with a better way of gardening. Without work ethic, it’s difficult to even achieve average today, the world is so competitive with a lot of hungry entrepreneurs that want to take all kinds of great things to the next level! Over the years, Jessica and I have been complimented on our success. I often remind my friends that before our success, both Jessica and I were willing to stay up all night, day after day, to build this company and risk every cent we had on the journey! My good friend Jay Martin has always stated that every successful leader needs a good buddy. And I agree with this, over the years I’ve seen many talented individuals fall short of their greatest potential because they lacked humility and openness to partner with others. My wife Jessica has been my check and balance. Her intuition is usually spot on and over the years, I’ve learned to call on her for advice and wisdom during the most challenging times. She’s also willing to put me in my place when I’m out of line and in my opinion, that’s incredibly important in a partner. A partner that agrees with you all the time is not a real partner, it’s a yes man!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Once again, there are so many that I love and live by! So many people in our world today complain about problems and things they dislike. Social media is full of a trillion examples of this. I see challenges very differently. I truly believe in great leadership and great life experiences. Challenges are nothing more than contrast and that provides clarity to steer my ship. In other words, when we know what we dislike, we know what we do like, and this helps to guide our path towards a meaningful life purpose!
Are you working on any interesting or exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Yes, several! Almost every year we’ve been in business, we’ve developed a first-of-its-kind in-world farm. For example, we partnered with the late Kobe Bryant, the Clinton Foundation, and the Getty Foundation to create the world‘s first LEED Platinum green building with a rooftop aeroponic farm as part of the building to support homelessness in Los Angeles. Projects like these and the ones we’re working on today, inspire so many people to grow their own food. This in turn inspires the extraordinary power of the local food movement. I love this movement because it’s making us healthier and it’s greening our planet at the same time!
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about creating a successful garden to grow your own food. Can you help articulate a few reasons why people should be interested in making their own vegetable garden? For example, how is it better for our health? For the environment? For our wallet?
This is such a great question because so many people don’t even know where their food is coming from today. In many cases, it’s processed, packaged, preserved, and flown in from all over the world and covered in harmful chemicals that over time, cause disease in our bodies and damage to the environment. Modern agriculture leaves a huge carbon footprint on planet earth. When we grow in a Tower Garden, we leave almost no carbon footprint, we eliminate the use of harmful pesticides, and we always have clean, healthy, highly nutritious food right at our fingertips. It is Tower to table in a few footsteps! To quote my good friend Ron Finley, “ Growing food is like printing money.” I know healthy people that spend hundreds of dollars every week on fresh produce at places like Whole Foods. Instead, you could easily grow your own food right in your own backyard or kitchen!
Where should someone start if they would like to start a garden? Which resources would you recommend? Which plants should they start with?
That’s a simple answer, www.towergarden.com We took the bending, weeding, tilling, and complication out of gardening and made it fun and simple for the modern family! To me, we created the iPhone of gardening, and children love it! We have thousands upon thousands of Tower Gardens in schools around the country and even first graders are growing their own food! If a first grader can do it, anybody can do it! We have all the gardening resources in one spot! If someone has a first-time gardener and/or Tower Gardener, I recommend starting with all types of lettuces, leafy greens, and herbs! These are simple and they grow extremely fast in the Tower Garden. Let me explain this in detail a bit further. Anyone leaning towards a healthy diet is usually having a salad every day for lunch or dinner. So, lettuces and other nutrient-rich greens are perfect. I also believe that most people on a healthy path are doing some type of smoothie or juicing throughout the week. Kale, multicolor swiss chard and parsley are three of the simplest superfoods that grow like a weed in the Tower Garden. They can be harvested month after month after month!
Can you please share your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food”? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
Whether you’re a Tower Gardener or a soil gardener, there are five simple things you need to be successful. 1. Good sunlight is a requirement for all vegetable crops. 2. Easy access, if you can see your garden, and it’s not far away, you’ll be inspired to harvest from it every day. 3. Excellent nutrition for optimal growth. Soil gardening can be complicated and confusing for the beginning gardeners and soil-based fertilizers burn out quickly and make plants slow growing later in the season. This is one of the main reasons I’ve always believed in hydroponic growing, and the extraordinary food we have created for the Tower Garden. It is bulletproof! Follow the simple recipe by mixing the nutrients with water, and then Tower Garden does all the rest of the work for you throughout the growing season! 4. You need to know how to maintain, and harvest produces to reduce the risk of traditional garden pests. We teach you these very simple techniques at Tower Garden! 5. Choose your crops wisely. Many beginning gardeners plant everything they can think of, and they fail because it’s too much and too complicated to handle. I always teach my beginning gardeners to theme your Tower Garden. For example, three simple Towers would be a salad tower, a juicing or smoothie tower, and an herb cooking tower. This supports almost every healthy lifestyle out there!
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a garden? What specifically can be done to avoid those errors?
The biggest mistake I see is people planting gardens in poor soil conditions and this is always going to lead to mediocre results. Unfortunately, so much of our soil today is depleted and even contaminated in many urban settings. Traditional gardening usually requires quite a bit of cost to amend the soil and build it up to optimal conditions. One of the greatest joys that I’ve been able to give with the Tower Garden is perfect nutrition every single crop cycle. But let me give another example. Not understanding plant space creates all kinds of challenges. For example, if you plant a radish right next to a vining squash plant, the squash will grow over it and the radish will never get enough sunlight to grow healthy. With vertical gardening, we always explain to people that the Tower Garden uses a very small footprint, only a 30-inch circle. It’s important to remember that it is a vertical condominium for plants! So up top we’re going to plant the smallest plants, in the middle of the Tower we’re going to plant medium-size plants, and at the bottom of the tower we’re going to plant the largest plants. Pyramid planting always allows for sunlight to reach all the plants this is extremely important for good healthy pest free crops!
What are some of the best ways to keep the costs of gardening down?
Have a Tower Garden with a purpose. What I mean is, plant a Tower Garden to fit your specific lifestyle and where you spend the most money to support that lifestyle! I gave some examples earlier, harvesting from your juicing or smoothie Tower every day saves you hundreds of dollars every month at the grocery store!
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would honestly have to say, we’re living the dream, we’re doing just that! Tower Garden is not just a product, it is a movement, and we are inspiring a healthier way of living around the world!
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Oh goodness, once again there are so many! Honestly, probably our president and the leaders of our country. The local food movement probably has the biggest potential for reducing humanities carbon footprint on planet earth more than any other single thing. I really believe this, I mean think about it, every time you harvest a head of lettuce or a bunch of kale from your Tower Garden, you are eliminating the diesel fuel from the tractor it took to grow the food. You are eliminating up to 98% of the water it took to grow the food, you are eliminating the pesticides it took to grow the food, you are eliminating the plastic package, you are eliminating the cardboard box to hold the plastic packages, and you are eliminating the shipping. An example is growing food in California and shipping it all the way to New York, which is thousands of miles away. Therefore, you are eliminating the building with chilled storage used to store and sell the food, you are eliminating the gas to drive your car to the store to get the food, and the list goes on. The alternative? I walk to my Tower Garden, harvest my produce for the evening dinner in less than a minute, and I just eliminated everything I just spoke about! Isn’t that amazing! What’s even more exciting is the food I’m eating is clean, healthy, highly nutritious, and free of harmful pesticide chemicals! I am in control my food supply and I know where it comes from!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I support a lot of organizations and work around the world. For the past 11 years, I have served as the Chief Technology Officer for the Tower Garden company. My primary focus in life is supporting the Tower Garden company’s research and development, new innovations, and support and train the many individuals who lead our movement around the world today! You can follow a lot of the exciting work our company is doing on our social media channels at www.towergarden.com. And I’m always excited to connect with like-minded people on LinkedIn. I’m excited to walk with anybody who wants to help spread this movement around the world for the betterment of all humanity!
Thank you so much for the time you spent on this interview. We wish you only continued success and good health.
Tim Blank Of Tower Garden: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.