Indoor Cultivation Platform
Local Food Can Be Cultivated in Many Ways in the Future
Perho Culinary, Tourism & Business College and Green City Farm are actively promoting sustainable and carbon-neutral urban farming. Students from Metropolia University of Applied Sciences designed and set up an indoor cultivation platform in the lobby of Perho Proffa at the Töölö campus. In the coming months, herbs and microgreens will be harvested for use in Restaurant Perho’s kitchen.
Green Nutrition from the Indoor Cultivation Platform
Hydroponics allows for quicker harvests in a short time. The primary growing medium is Green City Farm’s organically certified sowing soil from 2023. A few small containers contain expanded clay pellets, which can be disinfected and reused. Organic seeds left over from Green City Farm’s spring cultivation have been sown into carefully washed product packages sourced from Restaurant Perho. The irrigation water is reused, ensuring no waste of water or nutrients. In a closed space, optimal growing conditions can be maintained year-round without separate heating. The lobby of the Proffa building at Töölö campus receives natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows, and additional lighting can be provided with energy-efficient LED lights if needed.
New Ideas and Solutions
Indoor cultivation of microgreens and herbs is part of the Urban & Local project, which develops new ecosystem-based indoor farming environments in collaboration with companies and research institutions, and explores substrates suitable for circular economy. Metropolia University of Applied Sciences has long been involved in developing cultivation platforms and technologies. At Perho, small-scale cultivation is being tested within the framework of the project.
Metropolia students repeated the experiment in late autumn 2024.
