Welcome to the new culture of horticulture! PrimeBox.org was founded with a clear vision: empower people to grow nutritious food anywhere. PrimeBox.org sets forth to create and support a platform upon which anyone can easily grow top quality produce anywhere in the world. Platform tools certified by PrimeBox.org combine low cost open-source horticulture systems with powerful software services. Together, these create a uniquely intelligent gardening system for everyone, one that feeds people and builds communities. A PrimeBox solution is open to all, simple to manage, cost effective at scale, and encourages sustainable horticulture. We are excited to launch the PrimeBox.org initiative and invite you to join us!

Initiative

Empowering everyone to grow the fresh food they consume requires simple and cost effective solutions for home horticulture. PrimeBox.org is working several initiatives to provide compelling horticulture tools that help you and your community begin growing superb fresh food today!

Creating a standard

Growing your own food successfully requires diligence and optimal environmental conditions for your chosen crops. Central to home horticulture is a reliable, cost effective environmental controller. Commercially available controllers are complex, expensive, and rely on manufacturers for improvements. The PrimeBox.org initiative creates a standard for open source environmental controllers and complete gardening systems used in home horticulture. All PrimeBox certified systems must adhere to four guiding principles : easy to acquire, easy to assemble, easy to manage, and superior cost-utility. Our certification standard ensures a home horticulture system of exceptional value and functionality.

Easily acquired components

  • Sourced from common off-the-shelf stock materials
  • Available from a variety of retailers that sell directly to the public
  • Our certified systems will never contain proprietary components that can’t be easily substituted from multiple sources

Easily assembled systems

  • Certified systems include detailed step-by-step instructions for assembly, operation, and integration
  • Assembly does not require advanced mechanical know-how or specialty tools
  • Online support documentation is frequently updated for efficient starts to growing projects

Easily managed

  • Designs that simplify creating, activating, and updating environment schedules
  • Standardized systems are user friendly for simple, reliable gardening experiences
  • Built-in integration with online web services to optimize intelligent system functionality

Superior cost-utility to market alternatives

  • Standardized systems offer substantial cost advantages to market alternatives
  • System designs use common materials and components to reduce initial cost
  • Designs focus on efficiency to reduce running costs
  • PrimeBox.org certifies only open source solutions to eliminate licensing costs

Providing simple garden projects for DIY’ers

A cornerstone of the PrimeBox.org initiative is to support simple garden projects for proud do-it-yourselfers! We share with all gardeners a love for hands-on experience. Our dynamic, highly functional grow systems are well suited to the DIY attitude. Build it, help us improve it, and make home horticulture part of your lifestyle.
Growing a marketplace for low-cost gardening systems
PrimeBox.org is committed to developing a robust public marketplace for tools that grow food. Evolution in horticulture requires an evolved marketplace for sourcing and sharing resources. Innovations in individual and community horticulture should be a publicly accessible and dynamic resource not limited by artificial scarcity, proprietary business interests, or planned obsolescence. The PrimeBox.org initiative is committed to standardized open source horticulture systems, decentralized production of systems, and a public forum for user networking.

Vision

The PrimeBox.org vision is to provide a global network of individual horticulturists the cutting edge tools and technology to grow nutritious fresh food within a community marketplace. Our vision brings together advances in materials and data science, computational intelligence, and a generative business model to saleable horticulture.

Completely scalable horticulture systems will empower gardeners of all experience levels to grow food gardens of any size – anywhere.
The heart of the PrimeBox.org vision is empowering anyone to grow their own nutritious food. Our seminal contribution will be to achieve this objective in times of uncertainty about cost, quality and availability of fresh food. Empowering individual growers at scale requires the design, implementation, and distribution of open source networked gardening systems
PrimeBox certified horticulture systems will allow gardeners’ to control their food and horticulture supply chain.
Achieving the PrimeBox.org vision means re-localizing the fresh food supply chain – to your home and neighborhood! Complex, distant supply chains characterize large farms and affect our access to quality fresh produce. At PrimeBox.org we believe empowering people to control basic aspects of their food supply chain is essential for individual and community health. A key aspect of our vision is to encourage inexperienced horticulturist everywhere to take control of their fresh food supply.
Advance the culture of horticulture through networked horticulture systems that support communities to produce and share highly nutritious fresh food.
PrimeBox.org will advance the culture of horticulture through its innovative technology and networking applications. As community gardens demonstrate, local gardening and horticulture projects build community and culture through collaboration and resource sharing. Our PrimeBox.org vision sees networked horticulture systems bringing people together by sharing gardening information and highly nutritious fresh food. Similar to social media that provides platforms to share information among friends, our certified grow systems will provide venues to exchange gardening information and quality fresh food with your community.

Purpose

Primebox.org exists to improve health and build resilient communities through growing fresh food everywhere. People who participate in our initiatives share a commitment to good food, good people and vibrant community.

Commitment to healthy living

Primebox.org is committed to designing, implementing, and making accessible tools needed to grow nutritious fresh produce at demand scale – anywhere. Our health depends on good nutrition, and quality fresh produce is a core constituent of good nutrition. PrimeBox.org is committed to helping you create highly efficient gardens in the most unlikely places. Someone with no gardening experience can grow hundreds of pounds of fresh produce in the corner of a garage, basement, deck or community center – that’s the kind of experience that feeds our purpose!
Build resilient communities through food and information sharing
PrimeBox.org wants to help gardeners create virtual community gardens where neighbors can plan, grow, and exchange fresh food. Distributed garden networks are not a new idea, but their management and marketing are rudimentary and limited. Building stronger communities through food sharing will require smarter gardening systems, distributed garden networks, and a marketplace to facilitate connections and sharing. PrimeBox.org will develop this integrated system to efficiently produce and distribute quality fresh produce and empower local economies.

Contribute to a generative economy
A generative economy built upon values of fairness, sustainability and healthy communities is emerging worldwide. Through alternative ownership, production and marketing structures, socially conscious businesses equally serve community and economic interests. PrimeBox.org will contribute to the emerging generative economy with our open source horticulture system designs; PrimeBox.org certification standards; and online forums for sharing gardening information and fresh produce. Please join us in building PrimeBox.org and evolving the culture of horticulture – together!