Kitchen farm
- Herbs and salad for one household
- One tent, one light, a DWC or Kratky tub
- No business plan needed
Setup about $250–520
THE SMALL FARM ISSUE · WINTER 2026INDOORS · GREENHOUSE · BALCONY · GARDEN
FOR 1 TO 20 SQUARE METRES
Grow a farm, not a houseplant.
Size it, price it and plan the first month of a small hydroponic farm in a closet, a garage, a spare room or a greenhouse.
Free to plan · Grower $1.99/wk · $4.99/mo · $39.99/yr
Tap the packet to turn it over
How much farm fits in your space?
Pick a floor area, a crop and where it grows. Indoors the estimate assumes four shelf tiers over half the floor; in a greenhouse, one bench level over 70% of it.
Where it grows
Crop
| Harvest per week | 4.8 kg |
| Setup cost, once | $2,080 |
| Power and inputs per month | $110 |
| Value at your price | $250/mo |
| Pays back in | 15 months |
An estimate, not a promise. It assumes every kilo sells at your price — selling is the hard part.
The full ROI table with your own costs, saved to your notebookUnlock with Grower →
What the estimate assumes
- Lettuce: 3 kg per m² per 35-day cycle (20 heads × 150 g). Basil: 1.1 kg per m² per 28 days. Microgreens: 1.9 kg per m² per 10-day cycle (250 g per 1020 tray).
- Grow lights: about 120 W per m² of lit shelf, 16 h a day indoors; 6 h a day of top-up in a greenhouse in winter only.
- Heating to 20 °C in winter: 36 kWh per m² of floor per month indoors, 90 kWh under glass.
- Setup: shelving or benches, channels, pumps and lights, $190–260 per m² of growing surface.
- Inputs: seed, nutrients and media, $1.50–6 per kg harvested. Labour, rent and packaging are not included.
Three sizes of farm
Most growers start at the first size and move up once a full cycle has gone well.
WHERE TO GROW
Same plant, four places to grow it.
Where a crop grows decides its light, its heat and its season. Pick the place first, then the system.
Indoors
Year-round, every crop on this page. You supply all the light, so DLI and the power bill are the two numbers to watch.
Greenhouse
Free sunlight for most of the year, top-up light in winter, and heat loss through the glazing as the main cost.
Balcony
Spring to autumn in most climates. Passive systems work well because there may be no socket for a pump.
Garden
Soil or soilless beds outdoors, in season. Your climate zone and frost dates set the calendar.
WINTER EDITION
Fresh salad while the garden sleeps.
In winter the lights do the sun’s job and a heater does summer’s. Both show up on the bill, so the sizer counts them. Lettuce wants its water between 18 and 22 °C: colder and it stalls, warmer and dissolved oxygen falls while root rot rises.
Root-zone temperature and oxygen · Root rot
16 hlight per day for leafy greens indoors
18–22 °Cwater temperature to hold for lettuce
144 kWhextra per month to heat a 4 m² room (sizer assumption)
A farm is a record of what you did.
Your workspace keeps every pH reading, top-up and harvest per system. After a few cycles it shows which crop actually earns its shelf space.
System 1 · NFT, 4 channels
Day 1Transplanted 36 butterheadpH 6.0 · EC 0.9
Day 8Topped up 6 L, roots whitepH 6.2 · EC 1.0
Day 15Raised light to 16 hpH 6.0 · EC 1.1
Day 22Tip burn on 2 heads, more airflowpH 5.9 · EC 1.1
Day 33Harvested 34 heads5.1 kg
Sample entries, to show what the workspace records.
What to plant
Each guide gives pH, EC, light, temperature and the systems that suit the crop. All plant guides
The small farm series
Eight chapters, best read in order: money, crop, system, room, first month, business, selling and winter. Each ends in the tool that does the arithmetic.
1Ten square metres: what a small farm really costsThe full bill of materials and the monthly running costs, with the arithmetic.→ ROI estimator2Which crop pays? Lettuce, basil, microgreensYield, cycle and price per square metre of growing surface, side by side.→ Crop planner3NFT, DWC or vertical towerRunning costs, labour and failure modes — not only what each system costs to buy.→ System sizer4The garage farmLight for a windowless room, airflow, insulation and the electrical load.→ DLI calculator5The first 30 daysBuild, cycle, sow, transplant and the first harvest, step by step as you log it.→ Germination calendar6The microgreens businessYield and cost per tray, and a 10-day rotation for a full rack.→ ROI estimator7Selling what you growRestaurants, markets and subscriptions compared, and the questions to ask locally.→ Crop planner8Running the farm through winterHolding 18–22 °C water, heat loss per m² and the bill with heating.→ Root temp & DO calculator
Plan for free. Run the farm with Grower.
Free covers the sizer, every calculator and three plant diagnoses a week. Grower adds the full ROI table, an unlimited notebook, exports, reservoir reminders and a weekly summary of your own numbers.
$1.99per week
$4.99per month
$39.99per year · ~33%