10 Sep

Hydroponic Garden Fresh Farms Wins Entrepreneur Award

Written by Jolene Borrelli
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Dave and DJ Roesner founded Garden Fresh Farms.

A hydroponic start-up in Maplewood, Minnesota has won this year's coveted Minnesota Cup. Garden Fresh Farms won the Cup's Energy and Clean Technology Division, defeating 1,100 competing applicants to take home $25,000 in funding. They secured the prize thanks to designing their very own, patent-pending hydroponics system.

The Minnesota Cup is a statewide annual contest that recognizes entrepreneurs, inventors, and innovators across Minnesota by providing funding for promising business ventures. More than 7,000 start-ups have competed for the cup since 2005, making it the largest entrepreneurial funding contest in the US.

In 2010, Dave Roesner founded Garden Fresh along with this wife and son in St. Paul, Minnesota. Their first purchase was a 20,000-square-foot warehouse where they developed their proprietary system of indoor warehouse urban farming agricultural systems.

Garden Fresh also sells their systems – a lettuce factory and rotating orbit cylinder for growing, both of which can be either hydroponic or aquaponic. The farm boasts a sprout-manufacturing division and converted outdoor area for seasonal crop permaculture.