If you’re more all-thumbs than green thumb when it comes to your backyard garden, Liv and Brady Kong might have a solution for you.
It’s called EcoFarms in a Box, and it comes with packages of seeds and sensor technology that tracks the health of your plants and soil, including how much water the plants require.
“Everything you need will be shipped right to your door,” says Liv, 15.
The Woodbury Village siblings designed their invention, which is still in the prototype stage, to take the guesswork out of gardening and encourage more people to grow and eat healthy food. Their efforts won a silver medal this year in the business category at the international Genius Olympiad, hosted at the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York.
The event drew 960 high school students from 80 countries to compete. The top awardees were given scholarships to attend RIT.
“Our focus is on how can we get students to think about the environment, see the problems in their neighborhood and find solutions,” says the Olympiad’s director, Fehmi Damkaci, who helped launch the Olympiad in 2011.
The Kong siblings began working on their project together last year while their mother, Christine, was going through a health crisis, which increased their interest in nutritious food, according to Liv. Now they plan to seek investors to raise money for a patent and then talk to manufacturers.
“We’re really excited to see where this goes,” she says.
