Growing organic produce can be easier than many have been led to believe. One of the most effective approaches to fresh, organic produce, naturally, is to create the effluent kitchen garden off the back of a rear exit.
The beauty of this process includes the composting factors that can be an effective approach to recycling coffee grounds and other organic materials that are by-products of an active kitchen.
With the increasing cost of organic produce, a factor caused mostly by certification standards and effective monitoring of suppliers, generating an organic kitchen plot becomes even more alluring to the quality coffee shop and organic restaurant owner.
Organic Kitchens Reduce Costs with Sustainable Gardens
The advantages of maintaining an organic kitchen garden are many-fold. Brassica's, more commonly known as the cabbage-family vegetables, thrive easily in lower light areas and foggy environments.
With quality-soil and average temperatures - vigorous, thriving patches of broccoli, lettuce and spinach can easily be cultivated. Utilization of lady bugs and praying mantis can counter any negative affects of aphids, a famous lover of cabbage-family plants.
Careful combining of kitchen herbs and flowers interspersed in these table vegetable beds - keep indoor tables adorned with cheerful color and fragrances, while deterring unwanted pests.
Stands of bamboo create useful borders along the property lines, and can also deliver delicious bamboo shoots- while presenting a wonderful educational opportunity for any restaurant who utilizes totally sustainable, recyclable and sustainable dinner and food ware for take-out orders.
Raised Beds are Attractive and Simple to Cultivate Long-Term
All it takes is a few hours of direct sunlight, and the right soil. When an attractive box is built to be around three feet deep and as long as your growing patch allows, you can set up a simple system that can be maintained even when the seasons fluctuate.
By making sure you frame your beds with the framing supports for quick placement of low cost greenhouse siding, you can combine even broader varieties of vegetable combinations. Steady temperatures, and high-quality soil tend to be even more important than long hours of sunshine.
Household compost and restaurant kitchen leftovers, when properly handled, can be turned into quality soil supplements within just a week or two. A simple barrel of manure tea can keep fresh, deep green broccoli heads coming harvest after harvest.
The secret to rolling vegetable harvests is timed planting - every week, plant another row - and your harvests can be timed for your fine dining needs.
Walking the talk of sustainability is both an art and a science. Cradle to cradle thinking can also be described as bed to bed cultivating. Growing organic kitchen vegetables and herbs has always been the solution to lean times, and heightened nutritional needs. The English war time yard gardens are only one example of this reality.
Of Layers, Compost and Profitability
In today's restaurant-and-coffee-shop world - more kitchen managers than ever are looking for dependable suppliers of sustainable, certifiably organic products (check out our post on the inside scoop on "organic products").
From sustainable production of your disposable party dinnerware - all the way down to hand-applications of ladybugs onto the kale leaves in the kitchen garden - the layers are connected and predictable.
Quality fertilizer and steady growing-soil temperatures can make it possible to layer herbs, flowers and vegetables that are ready for harvest in a rolling weekly schedule.
Great resource planning is the key to dramatic increases in profitability all across the public-commerce sectors from manufacturing down to the management of organic produce in our local restaurants.
Becoming a living example of how this works - is the greatest form of activism and cooperation toward economic and environmental sanity any of us can engage.
