Container farm company to relocate to Clements Ferry Road

Tiger Corner Farms, a company that designs and builds aeroponic farms housed inside recycled shipping containers, will be relocating its facility from Summerville to Clements Ferry Road in early 2018, according to General Manager Stefanie Swackhamer.

The facility will be located in the same building as the new True Value, across from Beresford Hall.

“We are moving there to increase our building capacity,” said Swackhamer, a Daniel Island resident. “Moving to this facility will absolutely allow us to hire more employees. We have plans to start scaling up in 2018 but I can’t say for certain yet how many people we plan to hire.”

The company’s farm system utilizes cloud-based controls that allow growers 24-hour, 365-day monitoring of each plant from seed to sale and the ability to adjust any farm system setting from any computer, tablet or mobile device, according to a press release from the company.

“A single farm can be grown in any climate, in any location, using 98% less water than traditional farming—a healthy, fresh and sustainable approach to achieving bountiful harvests in a small space,” the press release states.

What is aeroponics exactly? It is a method of growing “with no medium,” explained Swackhamer.

“Soil farmers grow in the dirt, hydroponic farmers grow in the water, but with aeroponics the roots actually just hang and are frequently misted with high nutrient water,” she said. “This is all controlled by technology.”

A sister company of Tiger Corner Farms, Vertical Roots, also has plans for Daniel Island, continued Swackhamer. The company, which currently operates some of Tiger Corner Farm’s aeroponic systems, has plans to incorporate their produce into the menu at Dockery’s, a restaurant coming to Daniel Island in the near future (it is currently under construction on Island Park Drive).

“The farms will not be built into the structure of the restaurant,” said Swackhamer. “One of the great things is that they are very mobile. Each farm can hold up to 4,450 heads of lettuce at once with the head only taking approximately 35 days to grow from seed to harvest.”

Because Swackhamer, as well as the owners of Tiger Corner Farms, live on Daniel Island, being able to supply healthy produce to their fellow residents on a regular basis is vital.

“We all are very interested in being able to supply healthy and local produce on a consistent basis and in a sustainable manner to our community,” said Swackhamer.

For more information about Tiger Corner Farms, visit http://tigercornerfarmsmfg.com/.