OUR STORY

It all started with tomatoes. Hydroponic tomatoes to be exact.

 

Kurt, one of our founders, grew up around his family's hydroponic farm and was intrigued with the amount of control a hydroponic system offered a grower. While the family business shifted from tomatoes to a full nursery and landscape operation, that intrigue never left him. 

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Flash forward several years to 2012. A drought had hit northeast Kansas and Kurt and his brothers were farming an odd-shaped field that needed water. The typical pivot irrigation system wouldn't work and they began looking into other options. The brothers' experience in the landscape and nursery business had familiarized them with drip irrigation. So they gave it a shot, installing drip irrigation in the field themselves. It was then that the light bulb went off. Drip irrigation reminded Kurt of the hydroponic system he had grown tomatoes in as a kid. Both systems offered total control to the grower, not just in the amount of water a person could apply but also what could be added to that water for the health of the plant.  

 

This level of control, of integrating a plant's water and nutrient needs together in a subsurface drip irrigation system, had been around for several years in the vegetable and greenhouse industries. Finding a subsurface drip irrigation system (SDI) that would work for corn or soybean fields was difficult.

Just as they had to install that first field themselves, the brothers decided to create a company that would install SDI systems for other growers: NutraDrip.

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Today, NutraDrip is located not far from where those first hydroponic tomatoes were grown. We are continually pursuing innovation and exploring all the ways that a subsurface drip irrigation system can be utilized for maximum results. 

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