A Massachusetts company has developed a unique, hydroponic growing environment in closed 40-foot freight containers that are being used world-wide to grow produce in areas with bad soil or weather conditions not conducive to outdoor growing. Bay State natives Jon Friedman and Brad McNamara were developing rooftop greenhouses in the early 2000s when they realized a modular, hydroponic container might be a more viable solution. Hydroponics wasnât something new. Historians believe this soilless gardening can be traced back to hanging gardens of Babylon in Iraq built by King Nebuchadnezzar about 600 BC. Nutrient-rich water was pumped to the gardens from the Euphrates river to sustain its plants. A water-based growing thread continued through history and in the 1930s a University of California scientist, William Gericke, coined the term from the Greek word âhydroâ (water) and âponicsâ (work).