Company introduces ‘inflatable greenhouses’

From CNNMoney: From the outside, it looks like a crash-landed blimp. On the inside, it feels like a wind tunnel. For inventor David Chelf, this strange structure -- a high-tech greenhouse with no skeleton, whose lightweight skin is held aloft on breezes from giant fans -- looks like the future of agriculture.

“I knew nothing could grow without airflow,” Chelf explains. “And I thought if I could work with natural forces, like the wind, maybe I could create a structure that held itself up with very little energy.”

Chelf, the founder of Airstream Innovations, derived his unusual greenhouse from a single principle: plants grow healthier and more productively in moving air. He prefers a gentle, three-miles-per-hour wind, which he says is perfect for helping moisture evaporate from plant leaves without dehydrating them.

Armstrong Growers, which sells flowering plants to hotels, amusement parks and other commercial customers in southern California and Nevada, uses one of Chelf's greenhouses for organic growing in its San Juan Capistrano, Calif., location.

“We call it our bubble house,” says James Russell, Armstrong's vice president. “We find there are no insects, which is super-important when you're growing organically, and we've seen reduced disease. There's just nothing else like it on the market.”

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