In Manhattan, a vertical hydroponic farm is growing herbs for the city's best restaurants

Walking through the racks reveals so much: micro arugula, red Russian kale, green sorrel, Miz America, mint flowers and even blue spice basil. If you haven't heard of some of these, that's entirely understandable. Farm.One takes requests from chefs. Some of the most acclaimed establishments, Ai Fiori and Jungsik included, reach out in search of not only specific greens but even shapes and sizes. "Chefs tell us exactly what they want. It's grown to order for their recipes. We even know the leaf size the chef wants so we work backward from that," explains Robert Laing, the founder and CEO of Farm.One. "We developed a software to have that in the growing recipe. It guides where the plant batches go in the system." And while this maximizes space, much of their space and resource has been used for experimentation. "We always try to grow new stuff. A year and a half ago we were growing 20 products. Now we've grown close to 600. It becomes this nice library of flavor," he notes. It's clearly also a catalog of experience and knowledge.