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Salad seedlings by the thousand at Home Fresh.
Raymond Beamish with some of his new babies.
Ray’s Rocket ready for snipping.
Local lettuce Countdown-bound.
Level 4 lockdown caused a lot of people to focus more on food – how much they were eating, where it was coming from and, in many cases, how to grow more of their own. But as well as an increased interest in gardening, Covid-19 also provided the germ of an idea for two local businesses specialising in salad greens.
Raymond Beamish is no stranger to growing greens. His family has grown countless thousands of lettuce at their Home Fresh business on the corner of Sharp and Matakana Roads since 2003. Raymond’s parents, Peter and Carolyn, successfully switched from growing tobacco, maize and passionfruit in Zimbabwe to raising coral and oak lettuces in hydroponic gulleys for the Countdown supermarket chain, as well as for New World Warkworth, Pak’nSave Silverdale and many local hotels and cafes.
However, as with everything else, the arrival of Covid-19 and lockdown restrictions put a very large spanner in the works. Instead of picking, packing and driving 1200 lettuces to Countdown’s distribution centre in Mount Wellington six days a week, the Beamish crew saw demand drop and orders plummet, which got Raymond thinking.
“It started with Covid, when orders for fancy lettuce halved for a while. People couldn’t afford to buy as much, so I was thinking of ways to diversify. I started Ray’s Rocket four months ago,” he says.
The Beamish family had grown rocket and other herbs in the past, but found it hard to compete with the big growers. However, Raymond talked to local cafe and restaurant owners and found there was now sufficient local demand.
“There’s a market in our area for rocket, but deliveries from the big wholesale companies are unreliable and it comes from a long way away,” he says. “I can grow rocket all year round in the hothouse, and I’m also doing spinach. Restaurants love the leaf size I can supply.”
As with the 70,000-odd lettuce that are germinating, growing and maturing at any one time at Home Fresh, Raymond starts his rocket and spinach crops from seed. Once they’ve germinated and the seedlings have been transferred to their hydroponic beds, it doesn’t take long before he can start snipping the leaves with his scissors for customers.
“From sowing to harvest is four weeks, and I get two cuts from each plant,” he says.
As well as local cafes and restaurants, Ray’s Rocket is now available in New World Warkworth and he would like to set up a roadside stall in the future.
Mike Reid in his Matakana microgreen mini-farm.
Meanwhile, a short drive away in Matakana Valley Road, Mike Reid was also thinking about growing food during lockdown, albeit on a very much smaller scale.
“I was doing my garden and thought great, now I’ve got a garden, but I have to wait three months before I can eat anything. I thought there must be a better way and discovered microgreens online, so thought I’d give it a go,” he says.
Instead of several hectares of hydroponics, Mike’s Big Heart Microgreens operation involves just a few shelves, seed trays and LED light tubes in a spare room at home. Once he’d tried growing the first few trays of seedling sprouts, he thought it could be a good little business.
“People often couldn’t get access to good fresh food in lockdown, so I just saw it as a bit of an opportunity to supply friends and family, and then built it from there,” he says.
After swiftly selling out at his first market in Kaukapakapa, Mike started taking a weekly stall at the Mangawhai Tavern market, as well as at Smales Farm every month. He also supplies Matakana Bacon for their keto bowls and is looking to supply more cafes and restaurants.
He grows a number of different microgreens for a range of different flavours, colours and textures, including sunflower, purple radish, cabbage, garden cress and the bright pink amarathus, with each taking from seven to 14 days from seeding to harvest.
“They are 40 times more nutritious than the grown vegetable and there are so many different flavour profiles. You can either make up a salad or use it as a garnish,” he says.
The other big plus for Mike is that it takes very little time to maintain his microgreen mini-farm, meaning he can still concentrate on his main role as golf operations manager at Mangawhai Golf Club.
“If I had to compromise on anything I do, it would have to go, but I like the scale of this, I can control it.
It only takes me 10 minutes every morning, checking, watering and spraying.”
Info: Ray’s Rocket on Facebook and Big Heart Microgreens on Facebook
