Furniture giant IKEA has tapped into the sustainability trend of growing and harvesting vegetables in the home with the launch of a hydroponic garden that cultivates lettuce and herbs.

Due to hit the shelves in Sweden in May, the soil-free home gardening kit has been developed in collaboration with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

The main challenge was to develop a user-friendly ‘seed to plate’ system that doubles up as an innovative furniture piece for the home.

Using the hydroponic system, leafy vegetables and herbs can be grown year-round from seeds which are placed in absorbent foam plugs that go into a tray until they sprout into seedlings.

They are then re-planted in pumice stones for extra support and to hold water and then placed into the table-top gardening kit with its own light.

Watch the video here:

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