A HINT OF MINT
Growing herbs in a hydroponic crop greenhouse, for a home business.
This hydroponic business is growing almost as fast as
its crops.
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The factory tour. Come tour a remarkable
plant plant, where 18 workers produce 36,000 herbs
a week, then package, refrigerate, and deliver them to
grocery store chains over much of the East Coast.
The herbs. Each flavorful, six-inch plant reclines
in an attractive, hard-plastic case: a half ounce of basil,
mint, or other herb—roots intact.
Past, process, or product. Whichever you start with, your
setting will be New York's affluent Westchester County.
Here, 30 minutes from midtown Manhattan, lies a country
lane shaded by maples instead of high-rises. At its end is
Will O. Wood estates: a gorgeous mansion, woods, and lake,
and tucked around its side, our subject, Goodness Gardens.
The past. 1981. Twenty-year-old Brian Murphy is
landscaping part-time at Will O Wood and studying computers
in night school. Edward (Eddie) Rosenthal, estate owner and
financial investor, asks Murphy if he'd like to build and
run two hydroponic greenhouses for a research project.
Over three years, Brian learns (the hard way) greenhouse
construction and hydroponic crop management. The project
becomes a small business—the sale of tomatoes and
cucumbers. One day, college student Loretta Ciotoli pedals
by for a visit and, entranced, ends up taking a job.
From there, events accelerate. Hydroponic lettuce replaces
tomatoes and cucumbers. Ciotoli marries Murphy (her bridal
bouquet: two heads of hydroponic lettuce). Ciotoli-Murphy
tells Rosenthal that she can do a better job of selling
their produce than their current marketer. Eddie gives her
the chance, and she does: Sales shoot up. By 1986, 30,000
square feet of greenhouses yield $200,000 in sales. In
1987, it's 43,000 feet and $400,000.
But Loretta foresees trouble. "All of a sudden,
Weyerheuser, Campbell, everyone was getting into hydroponic
lettuce. The price was going to drop off. Brian and I were
sitting in our kitchen asking ourselves, 'What other green,
leafy items with quick turnover can we grow?' I looked up
at an old poster of culinary herbs we had on the wall and
said, 'Why not grow herbs?' " With a little help from Zita
Rosenthal (Eddie's wife), they did just that.
The process: hydroponics. Soil-less growing is
perhaps the quickest way to produce crops. Brian Murphy:
"Our crops mature 20 to 25% faster than those grown in
soil. Their roots get food immediately from the nutrient
solution. They stay small, so the plants put all their
energy into their tops. The crops are never under water
stress. And we can feed them exactly what they need to
grow. As a result, it takes us only four to six weeks to
raise an herb crop."
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