 Wendy Loh and I'm your Zoom buddy as we journey to take your health back we are coming to you live from isolation from my home office in my apartment and from the studios of Think Tech Hawaii in downtown Honolulu. Today our topic of discussion will be on getting healthy as we grow up with the Tower Gardens and you'll get what I mean when you see it. The Tower Gardens every line in Hawaii and the world should have one. What I would like you to take away from today's discussion is while we remain in isolation and being good stewards in our homes or when these lift the stay at home ban we should all be thinking about how should we take our health back. Okay we got to think about that so by growing at home and controlling everything possible to produce the best vegetables that we can start to take our health back we have the solution for you. Join us with this hashtag grown not flown movement and get involved with the I love local issues Hawaii campaigns. Today we are very blessed to have a special young man his name is Derek Chan and he is from a company called Tower it Up. A company that provides ceilings for those of you that want the perfect ceilings to successful growing. Tower it Up offers a variety of services from maintenance of your towers if you don't have time or if you just a bit lazy call Derek and he'll come and assist you help guide you and as well as once you all are thinking of putting up a tower farm and you just don't know gee I don't know if I can take all that responsibility can somebody help me with that. Yes call Tower it Up and that would be Derek and he is has a wealth of knowledge for this young man and he'll come to your home or to your farms and he'll assess what your situations are and he'll be right there Johnny on the spot so welcome Derek. Thanks for having me back on the show Wendy. Oh yeah it's a pleasure to have you here and you know Derek I know you didn't go to school for egg or for farming where did your desire and your passion come from for planting and planting with the tower gardens. Well just to kind of give everyone a little background on me I moved here to Hawaii about three years ago and really when I came here I just wanted to get a change of scene and you know learn how to surf and kind of everything else after that was just a bonus for me but you know I was lucky enough to be introduced to you through a mutual friend and I remember when I first met you you know you took me in and started teaching me about health and you know at first I was kind of a little confused about what was going on and you showed me the tower gardens and I was like what is this thing and you know I just saw a bunch of little cubes kind of lying around and you know and then over time you know you kind of showed me what it was and I started to learn about it and you know I was lucky enough that my mom was really health-conscious and she made sure that you know we ate our veggies and we were healthy and I didn't really get it growing up but you know after I started you know learning from you it just kind of all started to come together for me. Wow I wish all young men and women were as brilliant as you are Derek that you understood and yeah you know growing up all mom mom mom and dad right but that you were able to put it together and realize the value of what you have in your head because because you were raised that way it was kind of easy for you to make better decisions than starting from scratch like myself at 43 years old I started eating healthier and I said bye-bye to the spam and the Vienna sausage and you know the likes of that but you were really blessed because you didn't have that and you don't desire to have it because that wasn't part of your diet is that correct? Right. So you didn't grow up with Sam Musubis right? I mean you know maybe now and then a little sneak it in there but yeah no but pretty much my mom made sure that we stayed on the Wow how lucky you are and Mrs. Chan bless you for doing such a great job your son is a magnet of health and wealth and so we just enjoy working together because of that upbringing. So Derek I want to talk to you about you know we're in isolation right now and people are calling you I understand you're like busier than heck because people are realizing that they want what you have they want they want to be healthy and they want to understand how do you how do you grow and what do you how do you do it all so where does it all start Derek? So it all starts with the seedlings so I think we have a picture of the seedlings so that was kind of the first my first introduction into the Tower Gardens I just started growing seedlings on my own and experimenting and I was failing a lot at first and my plants weren't growing and they were you know they look kind of flimsy and not so good right but eventually I started to get the hang of it and started to give seedlings to people and giving away some of the stuff that I grew on the Tower Garden to people and over time like I just saw that there was a demand like people people wanted this right they needed help starting seedlings because they were having some of the same troubles that I was having so eventually I thought you know this would be a great business that I could use to help people and eventually make your own. And you know Derek you you spent a lot of hours on the lanai and then planting seeds and I know you were talking to them I could hear you out there and that's what it takes you got to love them because they're gonna give us health and nutrients that our body needs but you really took a liking to these little seeds you know put a seed in the earth and watch it grow as our good friend Stephen Ritz would always say but you've done a you've come a long way I mean we all started where you did the seed and either they don't pop up you get disappointed you get discouraged but you kept at it and you've perfected it and you know I want to I know that you gave us a slide and we want to pull that up next and I tell you not only are your seedlings beautiful but this head of Manoa lettuce everybody on Facebook is raving about it because it not only is so beautiful but I know it's full of all the right nutrients our body needs so are you proud of that little baby there Derek oh yeah definitely you know it's it's hard to believe sometimes that just comes from those little seedlings and a girl's full blown into that but that's how it starts and that's kind of like a metaphor for a lot of things in life right you gotta it all starts with a strong foundation so for a planet all starts with a strong seedling want to make sure that it's growing right from the start and then from there it grows into a big nice head of lettuce wow I mean that's no other than when I go to the market and I see you know I look at the and I compare in fact you know I even have one here right I told you I wanted one and so look at that that's like one that thing is bigger than my head I mean Derek you're like growing it so big you got to get bigger bangs and and check out the roots you know this root system is just beautiful and I often when you give this to me Derek I often think oh my gosh we should actually be able to cut the roots off and stir fry the roots because that's where all the nutrient is absorbed so there must be something we can do with all those roots but you know it looks like it just looks like a beautiful bouquet and one of my girlfriends when you gave it to her she says oh when I get married that's gonna be my bouquet can you imagine I mean walking down the aisle with this bouquet and it's edible so that's the best part you won't waste it right okay so not only are you like growing the best ceilings and the lettuce and you've perfected it but I know that you want the keiki of Hawaii to be engaged with what you're doing so tell me what are some of the projects you're doing with your company towered up yeah we do a lot of talks and demonstrations we go around and we work with different nonprofits like the YMCA or with different schools like Yalani or the Kamehameha school yeah Kamehameha school they're wonderful yeah so that's that's our other that's really our mission is to you know start from providing feedlings and produce to people is to really educate people about the foundations of good health right and the foundation of good health is putting quality food into your body and that's what we have with the tower gardens it's the food that we produce with the tower gardens is the best food that you can put into your body wow you know that is so fabulous and I understand when a child is actively involved with growing it and watching the you know the journey from seedling to sprout you know into the tower and then seeing it become this I mean this is intriguing and unfortunately a lot of the inner city kids don't have this experience and so you know that we can bring this opportunities for them to see it and experience it and then taste it and that's just the beginning for these kids and this is what they're lacking in their diets the fresh food that is the nutrients for our bodies and so thank you Derek for having a passion for the cakey as well as providing a need the quality that you're providing and the level that you're playing at so we're really really proud of you and I know you've been blessed with the endeavors and all the energies and I know that we have some exciting news that we brought to Hawaii I know that there was a contest that we participated in and we brought it home for the people Hawaii and so tell us a little bit about that opportunity that state farm insurance provided for us yeah so last year around mid mid 2019 we actually entered a contest through state farm to win a grant and thanks to everyone out there who voted for us and supported our cause we won the grant from state farm to build Hawaii's first tower farm so we're really really excited really proud about that so a lot of good things to come yeah I mean that's a chunk of change I mean mahalo mahalo to state farm and locally you know I've been a state farm member all my driving life so I partnered with the right company yes I did but then they rewarded us with this opportunity to put your project together where we bring in the kuna and the keiki and we teach them how to grow we're teaching them how to grow up and healthy that's why this whole idea about growing up is so valuable to us because we're encouraging them that this is the direction we all want to go is up and how do we do that with right nutrients and the right food that we're producing in the food that's coming off of the tower garden so I'm so excited that we have that opportunity but you know Derek everyone's thinking you know what the heck are they talking about this tower garden who's towered up what is it so I know we you brought a little video with you and it'll show us basically how does the tower garden work and we have a cartoon rendering so people can understand how simple the tower garden is already tower gardens state-of-the-art aeroponic vertical garden system uses both water and air to produce more colorful better tasting and incredibly nutritious fruits vegetables and herbs tower garden has a 20 gallon reservoir at its base that stores the tower tonic nutrient solution developed by experts in plant and human nutrition tower tonic mineral blend enables superior plant growth and better nutrition from your tower garden produce the process begins once the seedlings have been placed in your tower garden here they will be nourished with tower tonic nutrient solution inside the reservoir is a small low wattage submersible pump the pump pushes the nutrient solution up through the tower to the top from there the nutrient solution drips through the central tower using a special device that evenly cascades the solution over the exposed plant roots on the journey down the tower the nutrient solution feeds the roots and becomes highly oxygenated as it cascades gently down the reservoir this process is continuous providing fresh oxygen water and nutrients to the roots of the plants this patented aeroponic process enables food crops to grow faster than they would in soil so they can be harvested more often and it makes tower garden the healthier easier smarter way to grow your produce wow I want one and that's my thought exactly when I first saw that video and I thought my goodness you mean even somebody like me I mean I'm I don't know about you Derek but I have never grown anything in my life if somebody would give me a pot of orchids when the last flower would drop I would toss it down the chute because it would grow nothing would grow with me I kill everything and have no confidence in growing and actually really no desire to grow anything until they're introduced to the tower garden and it made our lives so easy and made us full of confidence because like you said there put the seed in the little rock will watch it grow two weeks later we put it into the tower and then we have this three weeks later I mean like Derek how easy right yeah doesn't get any easier than this right I can I can relate I had no background in gardening or growing anything I think once I'm at my work I killed like I managed to kill a cactus so yeah so now go figure now I'm starting ceilings and growing lettuce and and you know becoming an urban farmer so if I can do it anyone can do it wow you know and it's so brilliant because you know I own a chocolate factory so the only thing brown in my nails were chocolate and so now I'm growing and I still don't have anything brown in my nails and I'm very excited about that but you know I know that with the $25,000 that we were awarded we have chosen to work with a nonprofit one of the IHS properties and it's called kaho kaho wiki village and the only hard work that I I know we had to do Derek and we did some hard work we sweated but we needed to make sure that the foundation like you mentioned was solid and right and so the only hard work that we had to do basically for this tar farm and we have pictures we have a picture of this where we actually worked with the dirt right Derek so tell us a little bit about that yep so we have evidence here that we in fact got our got our hands dirty and put some sweat equity into it it was it was a lot of hard work and digging out the weeds but again that's kind of a it's a good metaphor for for just life and improving wanting to improve yourself whether it's your health just taking out the weeds and removing all the old bad habits and and bad information and making way for for a new group new growth which is what we're doing with this our farm is taking out the weeds and so now the next step is to lay down the foundation for our farm that's that's so valuable and you know like for you coming from you and you had a very young age learning and seeing you know visually seen life right there you know like you said putting on the best foundation so that we can have the best farm you know from the very get go and basically what you were doing were we were just clearing away the weeds like you said flattening the earth and then now we're going to create a box right so it like a growing pad and that would be so wonderful that the target is can go on to the growing pad of gravel or whatever choice we decide on and that we can make sure the main thing is that we can shimmy it so it's lays a level and that's the most important part about the target and is that it lays level you know so the water has even flow up if it's at an angle one side has more water dripping than the other and that's not the best situation for the Tower Farm so one step at a time Derek and yeah it's taken taking some time but you know we had to we had to do it right right there's a lot of audience to make sure that we had covid and we had covid we went and we were six feet apart and we died and we didn't smell each other's sweat we kept our distance so so the the most important thing is that the base work is done I mean I know that we travel to many different tower garden farms to look see how easy or how difficult this whole thing was and we stumble apart upon a couple universities in California and the next slide will show us one of the university properties and maybe you should share a little bit about this Derek right so this was at the UCLA campus on the rooftop so this Tower Farm grows enough produce to feed the students in the cafeteria which is literally 10 feet away so those students they're getting the best produce possible right I mean most food travels thousands of miles to get to the final destination and here with the Tower Farms what they allow us to do is I like to call it hyper local farming so even better than local farm is hyper local the food doesn't even travel one mile before it gets to its final destination so here at UCLA I mean these these kids are getting the best of the best quality food and that's what we want to provide for the people of Hawaii with our Tower Farm is gonna be right in the middle of Honolulu and it's not it's not gonna travel even five miles by the time that it gets to the people that end up eating it and you know the other part too Derek like you mentioned you know less hands would have touched the food it's gonna be your hand and your hand alone and then putting it into a bag or to a container and off it'll go even to the restaurants or to the stores and the next person who touches it will be grabbing a bag with their lettuce in it so again COVID or no COVID that matters because our hands will be clean and it will be in the bag and no one else should touch your food yeah I think I heard that on average the produce that you buy at the grocery store is touched on average 11 times before it just gets to the store and then you have everyone who goes into the store and touches your food and picks up the lettuce puts it back down so you can just imagine how many people have touched it but again like you said with our Tower Farm we know exactly who's touching it and it's it's me and just me so wow that's exciting that I mean every step of the way makes a lot of sense and you know I know that you mentioned the Tower Garden itself is made of food grade plastic and it's not made with PVC so there's no real toxins that would float around in the water into the plants into our bodies so that's a main component I know you also mentioned if I'm correct it's ultraviolet protected twice so that means this thing won't cracker chip in the heat of Makaha or in the heat of a desert so your Tower Gardens should last you a lifetime as long as you maintain it you wipe it down and you just show it a lot of love so the system itself is so beautiful and simple and I know when I watched the video it has a drip system instead of a sprayer when I know before in the past when we use sprayers the sprayers would get clogged with all the residue and you know the mineral built up and so using a drip system we my towers are sitting on my balcony for the last eight years never got stuck up so all these little aspects just make for a perfect you know vehicle to grow great food and you know you spoke of UCLA and I know that Hawaii has always been a place where we want to just let it thrive and the one of the good opportunities is that we get to work with the CIP which is the Culinary Institute of the Pacific and they're very proactive there the Dean there is like he saw it in the mainland and he came back he says I want this and then we were introducing it to him he says oh my gosh the heavens there is a heaven and my dream has been answered and then what what happened after that Derek right so they they took a liking to the tower gardens they thought it was great and they still have one it's still there now and they they loved it so much that they decided to create a class just for it well it was called the farm the table and we we were there me and you to help out with that class and show people how they can literally go from seed to growing the produce to cooking with it so that's so empowering to be able to literally go from seed to your table and be able to control the entire cycle of where your food comes from I mean it doesn't get any better than that you know and in that slide the target and in the kitchen and with the students around it so yes they did go about and they clip most of the veg and you know reminded me so much of when I had my very excellent meal at the French laundry and the chef would go across the street and pick from the farm all the little gourmet little you know tender seeds or berries or shoots and he put in his basket and he come and of course it costed us an arm and a leg but worth every bit of it so everybody here in Hawaii can get that farm to table right on their balcony and it's just so simple and that's what intrigued me a lot is when I did experience the French laundry cuisine and so as I said I have that every morning for the last eight years Derek fresh kale smoothies five minutes owed into my body it is the ultimate best I couldn't ask for anything further so I'm excited that we are going to continue the journey with the KCC culinary Institute of the Pacific and the best is yet to come with them we're very wise to have figured it out and we're just excited yeah I also want to add to in the picture I don't know it's still up but it there was grow lights so for anyone who doesn't have an eye doesn't have a backyard and thinks that they can't grow big well now they can right these new LED lights are great the lettuce and herbs and you can even do tomatoes and cucumbers and other fruit and crops inside if you really wanted to as well so this eliminates the excuse for it for not being able to grow on your own everyone can can grow Wow exciting and you know Derek I remember when I we posted that slide of the groundbreaking at the Kahuiki village somebody was very inspired and this is what it's all about if we can inspire someone to want to be healthier and want to grow then we have accomplished our mission and this young man he lives in Hilo he lives in Hilo and he's actually the one-time poster boy for muscular dystrophy he was born and has never walked and he's on a wheelchair and he has the desire to start a tower garden farm in their front yard in Hilo and after they saw what we were doing Derek he was so inspired and he said mom you got that check right you got that check in the mail from them from the president can we put it to good use and so they invested it and they now are going to be one of the first tower garden farms in Hilo inspire but by what we were doing here and there was this idea came about only ten days ago it was dirt it was a raw dirt and weeds and then they dug it up and then the family invested in the cement they poured their slab already and they have like nine tower gardens or is it eight right there I think I thought they had nine oh they have nine so they have nine tower gardens and it's gonna go it's up already and they're waiting for the seeds to get sprouted and when it does then the people on that island who are so deadly afraid of the rat lung worm because it's just all over in Hilo and on that side of the island it's just crazy wild and disgusting but they're figuring out how they are allowing no rat lung worm into their little farm into the the food source that they're going to create for the people there so I'm so proud of you Jax and Jessica and the family their brothers so this would be one of the first special needs farms he is on a wheelchair and he's determined to make this happen of course with his family his mom and his dad and his brothers they're going to help him do harvest the upper levels and he will be able to grow the seedlings and the lower ones that he can reach while on his wheelchair so to shave for you Jax we're so proud of you and we're gonna watch you grow so that's the kind of stories Derek you are inspired and by what what you're doing you know creating all these different classes with the kids if we can inspire one we inspire Jax we inspire one more one more that means one more healthy child one more healthy family at a time and if we have to do one at a time that's exactly what we're going to do right Derek right yeah this is I mean that's exactly what we what we got into this for is to inspire and to educate people and the fact that someone saw what we were doing and was inspired enough to put up a farm I mean they put that up in like what a few days and then it's already up I mean that's amazing that's amazing we're really reaching people and really gives gives me a lot of hope and it keeps me going and is keeping me excited for the future yeah Derek and you know what I'm gonna show off your lettuce again this is my no lettuce guys with the roots Derek you should be very proud of yourself because you created this and there's much more to come this is just the beginning and I'm really really excited that people can if they want just you know private message Derek on tower it up and they can get this as well and he's gonna be right there hands-on to teach you and to provide you with seedlings so don't be shy okay I know everyone hasn't been so this is really a good opportunity to want more and to have more so for now Hawaii for now Derek Mahalo for joining us Mahalo for your inspiration and your diligence on wanting more for the people who might eat Mahalo to you and everybody stay safe all right this is all gonna pass and we'll all we're all in it together we're gonna come out with flying colors because everything there's a rainbow at every at every end of the rain at every end of the storm so just hang in there guys hello everyone