MAX FACTS
growing tips, news and trivia
Dinner is Served…in a Greenhouse
In Los Angeles, California, Kogi food-truck baron Roy Choi has opened
the doors to Commissary, a new, vegetable-focused restaurant at The
Line Hotel. Taking its soil-to-small-plate aesthetic to its most literal
end, Commissary has diners eating in a greenhouse. While
its focus is on fruits and vegetables, it’s not necessarily
a vegetarian restaurant, just good food and drink based
around plants as the foundation. Roy Choi wrote on his
Instagram feed that he was “trying to make vegetable[s] relevant
to a new generation by just making them fun.” The restaurant is also
an homage to all the people and families in Southern California that
work on farms to bring food to tables. Set beside a shimmering pool,
Commissary is a little oasis great for both locals and visitors—if they
don’t mind drinking water poured straight from a garden house.
(Source: thelinehotel.com)
Soil Microbes Thrive in Heat
Warmer temperatures shorten the lifespan of soil microbes and this may affect soil
carbon storage, according to a new study. A research team led by Shannon Hagerty and Paul
Dijkstra from Northern Arizona University measured two key characteristics of soil microbes
that determine their role in the soil carbon cycle: how efficiently they use carbon to grow and
how long they live. They found that higher temperatures make
microbes grow faster, but they also die faster. Soil
microbes consume organic carbon compounds in
soil, use some of it to make more microbes
and release the rest to the atmosphere
as carbon dioxide. The efficiency with
which microbes use the ir food to make
new microbes affects how much carbon
remains in soil, and how much is released
back into the atmosphere. Before this
study, it was believed microbes would be
less efficient at warmer temperatures.
(Source: sciencedaily.com)
Rooftop Farm Delights Seniors
For 40 years, the rooftop of the Hargrave House, a senior’s facility in New York City, has been
closed to tenants, but an infusion of city funding helped usher in a new purpose for the roof.
A hydroponic farm now sits atop Hargrave House’s 13th-floor rooftop, and at the height of the
summer it produced 700 vegetable plants, says David Gillcrist, executive director of Project
Find, the non-profit that runs the senior residence and farm. Project Find received $28,500 from
the Department for the Aging for the farm’s construction last spring, as well as for classes that
taught seniors how to tend to the vegetables and cook with them. About a dozen devoted seniors
became the farm’s caretakers. A natural with the tomato crop, Ruth Ku, 69, says she loved tending to the farm. “We cannot just stay in our apartments,” she says. “It gives us something to do.”
(Source: dnainfo.com)
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Maximum Yield USA | December 2014