InstaFarm Automated Indoor Microgreens Garden Review: Easy Being Green
InstaFarm Automated Indoor Microgreens Garden Review: Easy Being Green
InstaFarm 自动化室内微型蔬菜园评测：轻松享受绿色生活
WIRED Rating: 8/10 WIRED 评分：8/10
THE GOOD: No assembly required. Set up takes minutes. Very low maintenance. Extremely easy to use. You get as many microgreens as you can eat in about a week. 优点： 无需组装。几分钟即可完成设置。维护成本极低。使用极其简单。大约一周内，你就能收获吃不完的微型蔬菜。
THE BAD: High up-front cost. You’re locked into the InstaFarm ecosystem because of the unit’s proprietary trays. Limited use. Won’t fit under all kitchen cabinets. 缺点： 前期投入成本高。由于设备使用专用托盘，你会被锁定在 InstaFarm 的生态系统中。用途有限。无法放入所有厨房橱柜下方。
Not long ago, microgreens were reserved for fine-dining restaurants pretentiously using them as plate garnishments, with tweezer-precision application. Now, the week-old seedlings of nutritional powerhouses like broccoli and beets have reached the zenith of bona fide superfood superstar. You can use them on salads and sandwiches, in smoothies, or even as a pizza topping. Their nutrient density is well-established—according to a 2023 study published in the journal Molecules, they are even being studied to see if their “sole consumption can replace the intake of our usual food regime of vegetables and fruits.”
不久前，微型蔬菜还是高级餐厅的专属，厨师们用镊子精准地将其摆在盘中作为装饰，显得颇为讲究。如今，这些生长仅一周的西兰花和甜菜等营养“发电站”幼苗，已然跃升为名副其实的超级食物明星。你可以将它们用于沙拉、三明治、奶昔，甚至是披萨配料。它们的营养密度已得到充分证实——根据 2023 年发表在《分子》(Molecules) 杂志上的一项研究，科学家们甚至正在研究“仅靠食用它们是否能取代我们日常蔬菜和水果的摄入”。
If you like to eat locally sourced produce, you can’t get closer to the source than your own kitchen. It’s not especially surprising, then, that multiple types of home microgreens-growing systems have been popping up recently in my social media feed. I’ve tried a couple of them, but none have remotely come close to the efficiency and simplicity of the InstaFarm.
如果你喜欢食用本地农产品，那么没有什么比在自家厨房种植更接近“源头”了。因此，最近我的社交媒体动态中频繁出现各种家用微型蔬菜种植系统也就不足为奇了。我尝试过其中几种，但没有一种在效率和简便性上能与 InstaFarm 相提并论。
Plug-and-Play
即插即用
I’ve been reviewing indoor gardening systems now for almost two years, so when the InstaFarm arrived at my house in a massive box, I girded myself for an evening spent sorting screws and assembling pipes and hoses. Instead, I opened the package to find the InstaFarm looking exactly as it did in its online pictures, fully formed and assembled in its greenery-printed box, like Venus on the half-shell. I took it out, filled the cylindrical water reservoir with distilled water, and plugged it in. All that was left to do was place the proprietary trays on some of the nine tray-shaped indentations on the three shelves.
我评测室内园艺系统已有近两年时间，所以当 InstaFarm 用一个巨大的盒子送到我家时，我已经做好了花一晚上时间整理螺丝、组装管道和软管的心理准备。然而，当我打开包装时，发现 InstaFarm 的样子与网上的图片完全一致，它在印有绿植图案的盒子里已经完全成型并组装完毕，就像贝壳里的维纳斯一样。我把它拿出来，在圆柱形储水箱中加满蒸馏水，然后插上电源。剩下的工作仅仅是将专用托盘放在三个架子上九个托盘形状的凹槽中即可。
InstaFarm’s patented 4-by-4-inch compostable trays come prefilled with about a half-inch of soil (“sourced from Amish Country in Pennsylvania,” according to InstaFarm) and organic, non-GMO seeds, with the nutritional info for the final-product microgreens listed on top. They come in over a dozen varieties of nine-packs for $23, including individual cultivars, smoothie- and salad-specific blends, and even plain trays for growing your own greens or garden starts. It is worth noting that the trays are easily saturated paperboard designed for one-time use.
InstaFarm 拥有专利的 4x4 英寸可堆肥托盘预装了约半英寸的土壤（据 InstaFarm 称“源自宾夕法尼亚州的阿米什地区”）和有机非转基因种子，托盘顶部列出了最终成品微型蔬菜的营养信息。它们有十几种九连包品种，售价 23 美元，包括单一品种、奶昔和沙拉专用混合品种，甚至还有用于种植自己蔬菜或育苗的空白托盘。值得注意的是，这些托盘是易饱和的纸板，设计为一次性使用。
For comparison, Vego’s hydroponic microgreens planter, which I used last year, is just $60 for two units, while Gardyn’s is $100. Neither produces a volume of greens anywhere close to the InstaFarm, but again, $500 can buy a lot of store-bought microgreens.
作为对比，我去年使用的 Vego 水培微型蔬菜种植机两台仅需 60 美元，而 Gardyn 的售价为 100 美元。这两者的蔬菜产量都远不及 InstaFarm，但话说回来，500 美元确实可以买到大量的市售微型蔬菜。
InstaFarm has an app, but it doesn’t add much to the experience, other than the ability to activate night mode (which then turns off the light for up to 10 hours). More helpful is the button on the top of the unit that comes with a sticker describing how many presses are required for any function you’d need.
InstaFarm 有一个配套应用程序，但除了能开启夜间模式（关闭灯光长达 10 小时）外，它对体验的提升并不大。更有用的是设备顶部的按钮，上面贴有标签，说明了执行各项功能所需的按压次数。
Every 90 minutes, a metal nozzle arm pops out and moves along each shelf, sensing each tray and its plants’ height, humidity, and temperature. Once the nozzle is done sensing, it dispenses an appropriate blast of water, much like the spray heads in the produce section of the grocery store. If you have cats, they may be very interested the first time they hear the nozzle whirring and moving slowly over the shelves. (The first quick, unexpected spray was an entertaining event in my house.) Sometimes, this sensing was more accurate in theory than in practice—for some reason, the sensor consistently overshot the watering volume for the red beet greens (but only the beet greens), causing the tray to overflow daily.
每 90 分钟，一个金属喷嘴臂会弹出并沿着每个架子移动，感应每个托盘及其植物的高度、湿度和温度。感应完成后，喷嘴会喷出适量的水，就像杂货店农产品区的喷雾头一样。如果你家里有猫，它们第一次听到喷嘴发出嗡嗡声并在架子上缓慢移动时可能会非常感兴趣。（第一次快速且出人意料的喷水在我家成了一件趣事。）有时，这种感应在理论上比实际操作更准确——出于某种原因，传感器在给红甜菜苗浇水时总是水量过大（仅针对甜菜苗），导致托盘每天都会溢水。
After a few weeks, I noticed the nozzle making a slight mechanical noise once it finished its rounds, as it slowly retracted back to its resting position. It wasn’t loud—it reminded me of the sound the bull wheel makes at the top of a ski lift—but because the InstaFarm was sitting on my dining room table, it was noticeable. And I should also note it was on my dining room table because, despite the website’s claims the unit can fit under most kitchen cabinets, it was just slightly too tall for mine. This made it difficult to site, as it does take up an approximate 6-by-18-inch footprint. Given how easy it is to clip the greens off for salads, smoothies, and other meals, its most natural habitat is probably the kitchen, so you may want to measure more than once to make sure it will fit your space.
几周后，我注意到喷嘴在完成一轮工作缓慢缩回原位时会发出轻微的机械噪音。声音并不大——让我想起滑雪缆车顶部大轮子发出的声音——但因为 InstaFarm 放在我的餐桌上，所以很明显。我还要说明它之所以放在餐桌上，是因为尽管网站声称该设备可以放入大多数厨房橱柜下方，但对我家的橱柜来说它还是稍微高了一点。这使得摆放变得困难，因为它大约占用 6x18 英寸的空间。考虑到剪下蔬菜用于沙拉、奶昔和其他餐点非常方便，它最自然的栖息地应该是厨房，所以你可能需要多次测量以确保它能放入你的空间。
Greens Aplenty
蔬菜丰收
Just as the directions claimed would happen, I had lush, usable microgreens in about five days. For my first growing round (I’ve now been through four), I was overly excited and placed a tray on every slot. Unless you have a large family that eats microgreens for every meal, I don’t recommend this. I tried gamely to use them all, but after the traumatic experience of putting a tray’s worth of radish microgreens in a strawberry smoothie (so spicy, so radishy), I decided to share some of my first-grown trays with friends.
正如说明书所言，大约五天后，我就收获了茂盛且可食用的微型蔬菜。在第一轮种植时（我现在已经种了四轮），我太兴奋了，在每个槽位都放了托盘。除非你有一个每顿饭都吃微型蔬菜的大家庭，否则我不建议这样做。我曾勇敢地尝试全部用掉它们，但在将一整盘萝卜苗放入草莓奶昔（太辣、萝卜味太重）的痛苦经历后，我决定把第一批种出的一些托盘分享给朋友。
Luckily, the InstaFarm lets you place as many or as few trays as you want at a time; the nozzle will sense whether there’s a tray in that slot or not, and only water where watering is needed. The company recommends placing a new tray every one or two days, to ensure a consistent supply. It was interesting to me that, unlike other microgreens-growing systems I’d seen and used, this one is soil-based—it isn’t hydroponic. InstaFarm president Philip Hartman says this is intentional, to create a more stable growth environment for microgreens.“Hydroponics is very much dependent on the pH of the water, so depending on the water used, you will have varying germination.
幸运的是，InstaFarm 允许你一次放置任意数量的托盘；喷嘴会感应槽位中是否有托盘，并只在需要浇水的地方浇水。公司建议每隔一两天放置一个新托盘，以确保供应持续。有趣的是，与我见过和使用过的其他微型蔬菜种植系统不同，这款系统是基于土壤的——它不是水培的。InstaFarm 总裁 Philip Hartman 表示这是刻意为之，旨在为微型蔬菜创造更稳定的生长环境。“水培非常依赖水的 pH 值，因此根据所用水质的不同，发芽情况也会有所不同。”