The Freshest Veggies
Cultivating microgreens inside a strip mall
There is room to grow on Old U.S. 41 North in Bonita Springs. But not just at nearby subdivisions. You also find it inside a storefront at Signal Plaza, the strip center anchored by the Old 41 Café. A retired Army veteran couple has launched an indoor farm, New Age Harvest, for tiny vegetables known as microgreens— packed with flavor and nutrition. Compared with traditional bean sprouts, microgreens with tasty names such as wasabi arugula, lemon basil, cinnamon basil, chocolate mint and red Rambo radish kick it up a notch. They are ideal—used raw, never cooked—as featured garnishes on sandwiches, soups, pizza, fish and salads. Microgreens deliver a crunch, because you eat the whole plants—stems and all.
Chris and Lauren Zimmer have already proven they have the skill and equipment to turn out vast quantities of microgreens as well as full-sized leaf lettuce clusters. Now the only question is how to market them: to individual customers, to big retailers specializing in fresh produce or to restaurants?
They need to keep it simple and sustainable, because they have only one helper so far, albeit a key one. Lauren’s father, Tom Lachner of Bonita Bay, is a serial inventor and entrepreneur, whose successes include precision surgical gear.
Lachner says he set out to find and enjoy fresher and safer vegetables after public health hazards arose with romaine lettuce. He says while he did not invent any of the vertical and horizonal crop racks, lights, irrigation and dehumidifying equipment used in the New Age Harvest farm, he did build most
of it from scratch with over-the-counter parts. The key is infrared lighting, which gives off a purplish glow, to simulate the photosynthetic power of the sun. (Yes, it is the same hydroponic process used by the marijuana industry.) The only other ingredients are water and nutrients.
The tiny plants start as seeds embedded in an organic cloth, not dirt, that stays with them until they are eaten. “We sell things alive,” as Lauren Zimmer puts it.
Lachner also did the legwork to obtain local zoning permits and state and federal
The key is infrared lighting to simulate the photosynthetic power of the sun. (Yes, it is the same hydroponic process used by the marijuana industry.)
agricultural licensing. New Age Harvset has qualified for the national Homegrown by Heroes designation, and is recognized by the American Culinary Federation. Once chefs try microgreens, the Zimmers say, “they never go back.”
The business seeded by Lachner— successfully consumer-tested at local farmers markets and the New Age Harvest storefront—proved to be a good fit for the Zimmers, who met while deployed to South Korea and were retiring and moving to North Naples from North Carolina.
The microgreens, sold for $4 per pack, take from one to three weeks to grow— and would reach the size of conventional plants if allowed to keep going. “We’ve proven we can grow—and we can grow a lot,” the Zimmers say.
Microgreens, with tasty names such as wasabi arugula, lemon basil, cinnamon basil, chocolate mint and red Rambo radish, kick it up a notch.
In fact, the farm system works so well that the first test crop of leafy lettuce produced 200 pounds a week—way too much to sell—to the enjoyment of Café of Life charity clients.
Nothing grown goes to waste. Unsold microveggies can be dried and packaged as herbs. The future is promising. Tom Lachner is along for the local ride, but he does make one global point: “We have proven there is no reason for any place in the world to go without fresh produce.”