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Let me take you down, cuz I’m going to strawberry fields. Cheers.
A salute to celebrate these special strawberries ends here, at the sophisticated Marine Room
restaurant in La Jolla Shores.
The University of California patented the strawberry variety called Seascape. They’re
delivered to the restaurant on the day they’re harvested. These are the only strawberries
executive chef Bernard Guillas uses.
My strawberries have arrived. All right. This is gorgeous.
The road to strawberry stardom is far from glamorous. The journey begins at unique organic
greenhouse in Oceanside called Airstream Innovations.
Which brings up to the birthplace of this strawberry: a three-hundred-foot plastic cocoon,
which is actually a low speed wind tunnel. And it’s the constant three-mile-an-hour
wind that drives this strawberry to perfection.
Wind, that makes this a sort of fruit farm in a blimp.
It all begins with the intake tower. The intake tower captures the wind.
Two giant fans suspended in the greenhouse tower keep the three-mile-an- hour breeze
constant. That’s enough pressure to keep this frameless bubble inflated twenty-four
hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year.
You can see there’s no frame holding this up, only air pressure.
David Chelf is president of Airstream Innovations. He believes the patent-pending wind system
he designed in 2005 improves the plant’s photosynthesis, making it more flavorful and
nutrient rich.
The real benefit is the fact that the air is flowing form one end to the other at a
slow rate. You can see these leaves barely moving here. The benefit to the plant is that
it ultimately has more water, more minerals, more carbon oxide to the leaf and more photosynthesis
for flowers and berries.
A layer of plastic bubble wrap protects the soil from evaporation, which reduces the amount
of water these plants use by a third, while constant air pressure acts as a mechanical
barrier to bugs.
So here we are at the bottom of an intake tower, surrounded by an insect net.
If a pest happens to make it through the thick net and whirling blades, no pesticides, even
so called natural ones, will be used to stop it.
I’ve used my physics background to provide an environment where we don’t need any of
those
Instead, the cleanup is left to hungry ladybugs.
Essentially, it would cost us more money to spray with anything than using ladybugs.
Strawberries are San Diego’s fourth largest cash crop and part of California’s two-billion-dollar
strawberry industry. And Chelf’s new approach hasn’t gone unnoticed.
He has a very interesting technique because he’s taking and using a lot of mechanical
processes to make sure that no diseases or pests are in there where his crops are. So
when someone does something that’s mechanical, that mechanically separates their crop, they’re
probably going to be a leg up on everybody else.
But only if it’s cost effective.
You can grow strawberries very successfully here outdoors. If you want to take those strawberries
indoors and use that kind of technology, it's just a matter of whether the results or the
profit margin justifies the investment in the technology.
I know from my numbers now that it’s cost effective, and given that it is cost effective,
that it will ultimately be the solution.
A solution that’s good for the taste buds and the environment says Chef Bernard Guillas.
His advice: buy organic from a local farmers market.
How many farmers markets do we have in San Diego? Oo-la-la, forty-eight.
As Guillas puts the finishing touch on the strawberry napoleono, it’s clear the chef
shares his passion with farmers like Chelf.
I love what I do, he loves what he does, and we love to share our passion.
Strawberry fields forever.