 We published yesterday a blog on our sister site, Urbafresh Organics about a diet that may help with Alzheimers. What to do about Alzheimers was the provocative title and outlined a MIND diet that promoted brain health. Here are the highlights: The five unhealthy groups are
Source: Rush University This diet stresses a daily salad and one other vegetable were key components. By realizing that our micro greens/herbs pack the raw nutrient power of many multiples of the serving size into our produce, we believe that by including daily portions of our micro produce in small doses we may have the answer for the salad averse population. You can simply garnish your main meals or cooked vegetables, smoothies, soups, or virtually anything with a salad equivalent dose of goodness.
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Watch for our big announcement this weekend ...   We have harvested our first Microgreen Microherb Micro Farm and we are astounded with the results. We grow our farm out for around 2 weeks and were waiting for the radishes to put out their true leaves so we would have both microgreen arugula and microherb radishes in the same farm. Pictures give you the graphic views from seed to harvest and beyond. The first picture shows the tray at seeding, note the larger radish seeds were placed in the middle surrounded by the arugula. The second photo shows the actual tray just before we harvested. The third The crop created a bountiful harvest all from our medium farm (tray 6.5" square). We are anticipating offering other combinations in the near future. Later today we are going to publish a single crop tray of arugula microherbs. These first new farms have opened up a new level of growing experiences and crops, we are developing fast/slow pairings to allow for this sort of hybrid farms. Available now in our Micro Farm Store.  I wanted to have the ability to top water some of our trays with something more than a mist but less than just pouring water from a bottle. I searched for watering cans on the internet and it is amazing how expensive a simple watering can can be. Also I looked up clothes sprinklers as I remember my mom used to have a sprinkler whenever she ironed clothes, even when she got a spray and steam iron. It seemed the old way of simply spraying the clothes worked better for her. I envisioned a tool that would enable me to water the plants with a stream more like a rain than a mist. So that led me to DIY sites that gave me the idea for our rain bottle as I like to refer to it by. This rain bottle allows for easily top watering of our trays and reused mat garden as pictured above. I drank a vitamin water today for lunch as I liked the bottle and top. Then took a fine nail and created my rain bottle head by pounding the nail at intervals as shown in the photos at the bottom. This new tool follows within our expressed vision of using an eco friendly approach. Our trays are already using recycled bottles, now our rain bottle is using repurposed bottles ... good deal.  We thought you would like to see a really super sandwich from South Africa that my daughter found on her travels there. Called a Prego and lovingly draped with really nice microgreens, this is another example of the global use of microgreens. She has a travel site and food site for those who might be interested to follow on her adventures ... now in South Africa and headed for Turkey soon. Speaking of global, we announced today that we are expanding operations to India (see press release below). We are in the midst of unveiling a new Micro Farm initiative that will empower a new generation of urban farmers there. Through this new initiative we are also going to introduce some of our newly designed Micro Farms that we will be unveiling in the very NEAR future. These Farms are designed for in-home use of growing our beautiful microgreens and microherbs. Websites: Urbaform TerraFarms   Compare the picture today with our last posting 2 days ago. It appears that the leaves on our radishes have broken out the growth factor. The two crops are still microgreens but in a day or two we will be emerging into the microherb territory. Another thing to note is the arugula, the arugula is accelerating like the radishes and becoming sizeable offerings.
This photo is of the Micro Farm at 12 days. It appears that the radishes will be sprouting their first true leaves in a few and it will become a hybrid planting where you will have both microgreens and microherbs in the same tray. This is a perfect example of our Superfoods+ Micro Farms. The one factor you cannot see is the taste of these extraordinary, tiny nutrition packed morsels of plants. We have added our trace minerals to these crops and you can tell the difference when you first taste them. You can immediately tell there is something special going on here. Try these for yourself, this Micro Farm is now available in our Etsy Store.  Microgreens are a true SUPERFOOD, just last month Dr Oz started preaching to the choir. He followed Oprah who started the popular media coverage of microgreens. Many nutritional studies all concur that microgreens provide significant benefits and amazing taste in small packages. If you have followed our earlier testing, we showed you the effects of our sea solid fertilizer on the growth of our microgreens. The pioneering work of Dr Maynard Murray showed that by growing crops in sea solids produced harvests that were not only more robust but functionally packed with nutrients. People who have eaten our microgreens always comment on the unique flavor of our plants. Our new MicroFarm using both a radish mix and arugula shows how outstanding this combination can be. You can go right to our store to purchase this MicroFarm today. Photos are of the farm after 10 days of growth and while both crops are still microgreens. Potent nutrition, wonderful visual appeal and incredible taste all characterizes our new MicroFarm crops.  Fast Company has identified 4 Tech Trends That Will Define 2015 and prominently featured is Micro Farming. We have prepared our new MicroFarms that will allow you to grow fresh and nutrition packed microgreens and microherbs that are Simply the Best! How is it the best? Well, lets start with the items in the farm. Each farm comes with grow trays (3 sizes) and humidity covers that are made from recycled plastic bottles and the growing media is made from sustainable coconut coir with added nutrients including worm castings. Our seeds are all Non GMO and organic. Our new irrigation system features a simple bottom up watering process to make getting water to the roots of the crops easy and effective. Our crops are noteworthy both in their taste and visual appeal. We have been supplying our crops to chefs and stores and they all remark how the taste of our produce is exceptional. We include our secret ingredient of sea solid fertilizer to get that taste AND create a nutritional powerhouse in your food. The sea solids provide trace minerals to the crops which in turn give you the ability to replace many trace elements that are lacking in our modern diets by consuming fresh produce from your Micro Farm !!! Our farms are simply the BEST !!!  We have done more development work on our SIP (Sub Irrigated Planter) design and are ready to incorporate this innovation within our new line of kits. Today we wanted to highlight the setup and use of our SIP system and how it will allow your plants to grow better and save you time and effort. The SIP system will allow you to provide water to your micro farm from the bottom up. The wicking material in our mat stays below the surface of your media and almost immediately migrates the water from our irrigation tube over the entire mat which then moves up into the growing media. This allows not only efficient transport of your liquid but the water will be immediately available to the roots of the growing plants rather than being lost on the surface. The photos below show the dry wondersoil and mat and irrigation tube installed in our growing tray. Photo 2 shows the wondersoil after hydration and give you a sense of how much material is actually included in the packet of our new wondersoil mix. You would then place the mix around the irrigation tube and filling up the growing container. Photo 3 shows the mix spread evenly in the container and how the tube is properly above the surface of the growing media. The seeding is then done on top of the media and sprayed down before the clear humidity cover placed over the tray and put in a darker area away from direct light. In this planting, it was about 4 days before we took the cover off and the last picture shows approximately one week from seed to picture. Today I used a turkey baster to water the tray through the irrigation tube and you could see how evenly the water spread along the bottom - SIP success! The SIP option can be added to any kit for an additional $1.50 and will include the watering funnel and a custom fitted pad for your kit. The pads are reuseable so one kit will be enough for at least several crops.  We are ready to unveil our new Hybrid Microgreen/Microherb kits. Experiments with different growing rates has given rise to kits that enable you to have both microgreens and microherbs available to you at the same time. This first tray was a combination of sango radish mix and pak choi cabbage. We had started this tray as part of work on living logos and we have now grown this tray out to show our hybrid growing trays. The pak choi has grown around the sango mix and remains in pre true leaf microgreen stage while the sango mix has taken on the true leaf stage and created the wonderful looking microherbs we have referenced in earlier blog entries. We have several kits now under development but this first mix will be available this weekend. The kits will allow you to grow full trays of each or create this new hybrid planting. We are also going working on a custom blend of "soil" that includes our liquid sea solid fertilizer that adds trace minerals to your hybrid crops. This singular addition creates the most incredible tasting produce, not to mention kicking up the nutritional content to another level. Lots going on, so stay tuned and subscribe to our blog feed to make sure you don't miss out on the exciting happenings on the Farm ... |
UrbaformUrbaform is a technology integrator and developer specializing in food production in the urban environment ... Archives
February 2020
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