A HINT OF MINT

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This hydroponic business is growing almost as fast as its crops.

by Pat Stone

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."