The Green Review

Students at the University of New Brunswick, and other institutions across Canada, are seeking to promote and embrace sustainability at an individual, university, and community level. Students are avidly growing succulents in dorm rooms and apartment windowsills, and many student societies are investigating avenues to brighten up community spaces with living plants and foliage. The desire to bring chlorophyll to university corridors and society spaces exists; however, no affordable, educational, growing system tailored to university settings exist. The lack of resources – and, in turn, the absence of guidance on growing techniques – leaves many individuals and student groups unable to grow their own plants.

To reduce this dichotomy, we are introducing the UNIFarm Greenhouse: a scalable, modular, portable, and affordable greenhouse for university student groups. This is an initiative taken by five UNB students, Alexandre Banks, Ankita Menon, Brandon Saulnier, Chitvon Singh Mann, and Vaishnavi Modi, for the course TME3313.

UNIFarm greenhouses are targeted to university student groups who want to brighten up their classrooms, dormitories, and social spaces with plants. This system provides automated temperature and light regulation, a robust, modular, and scalable design, and a starter kit to facilitate the growing process.        

Miniature greenhouses are the ideal way to garden for anyone with limited space as they can extend the growing season whatever the climate. The objective of this project is to design and market a self-sustaining greenhouse that is scalable, portable, and affordable for university students, clubs, and societies. An embedded system will regulate the greenhouse temperature using fans for ventilation with the help of a motor, and programmable grow lights will increase flexibility in plant type. Two dials using potentiometers on the device will permit setting the temperature and duration of the grow light cycles by the user.

The goal is to build a self-sustaining greenhouse with a flexible modular design that can be retrofitted with autonomous watering in the future. Due to a lack of time, this functionality was not included in our present design. Furthermore, a starter kit, including seeds, 3D printed mid-sized pots, a gardening tips-and-tricks sheet, and some soil, will also be included. The project has a strict budget of $350, out of which 250 was supplied from the UNBSU Sustainability Fund.