The Green wheel

Another aspect of the change will be more and more people growing, at least partly, their own food. We will witness more urban farms, more green rooftops, and more solutions for home use.

One of these solutions was launched as a prototype for home users last week, by the Italian design studio Design Libero. The device called Green Wheel is a NASA-inspired rotary hydroponic garden. NASA has come up with many ideas over the years, but due to budget and time constraints a lot have been discarded. Among them was the concept of a rotary hydroponic system that would have provided astronauts with fresh herbs and salad on long space missions. But now the brilliant idea has been revived in a sleek design that is perfect for earth-bound applications.

The Green Wheel has many benefits over the traditional garden. First of all it allows a production of a variety of agricultural products. This device is absolutely ecofriendly. It helps you to grow your own fresh herbs and vegetables without leaving home and on the contrary with supermarket vegetables it helps to reduce transportation and plastic packaging consumption. The second benefit is larger growing area that helps to cultivate more plants.

Maximized illumination is another advantage of the project. The plants arranged around the light source in the center of the wheel. The lamp is placed closer to the plants. It helps to reduce lighting consumption in contrast with traditional garden lighting.

The object is composed of outer solid surface case that hides an engine which rotates the plants, a water reservoir and a pump for automatic plant irrigation. Vases and cover vases are placed in the perforated inner wheel. Each vase contains coco fiber, which provides perfect support for the plant and its roots. Simple and intuitive control interface can be managed through the smartphone or tablet by using an easy application. This application controls the amount of illumination, temperature of the light and to advise of water levels.

Design Libero