The future of The Chef’s Garden is in our research.
Early in 2019, we opened our brand-new agricultural research facility, located on-site, to expand our team’s ability to use new light-intensity spectrum equipment and more to study how to maximize our farm-fresh vegetables’ flavor, color, and nutrition.
We’re doing this to continue providing you with delicious and nutritious vegetables that are even more amazing than what we can deliver directly to your home today.
Since we built our new agricultural research facility, we’ve already conducted significant amounts of soil and tissue tests, for example. This has allowed us to efficiently gather information about our crop’s nutrient content, soil health, and other flavor-influencing factors without wasting precious time. We’ve also learned plenty about natural fertilization techniques and realize there is still much more to learn.
Over the next year, we’ll focus strongly on soil biology, isolating each segment to see what we can learn and improve. One goal is to find out which types of biology—and there are many types—affect flavor. Like with natural fertilization, we recognize that we’re just beginning our work in this uncharted territory, which makes this exciting work.
Another primary goal of our research team is to source new types of plants that might have better or different flavors than those currently available. We have tested over 500 varying plants in our research greenhouse, and out of those, we’ve gotten about ten plants that have made a difference. It’s a slow process, but it’s worth all our effort.
We believe that we already have the best-tasting vegetables, but we know we can make some even better naturally. Thanks to our perseverance in continuing with our extensive agricultural research program, the future is bright.
Science of Flavor
When our research lab was new, we did a deep dive on our blog about the science of flavor. We pointed out how the freshest vegetables—the most colorful ones, those with the most nutrition—are also bursting with flavor. There’s science behind all of that, which keeps our researchers eager to experiment with better ways to improve those qualities.
Our researchers are also testing for shelf life, finding ways to naturally extend it for the produce we grow—and deliver to you. As just one example, some crops—but not all—gain more dry weight when they get lighter. This, in turn, slows down the cellular respiration process once it’s harvested and packaged. In short, it has more shelf life and more value for you.
Using an infrared gas analyzer (IRGA), the team has packaged samples of our crops, measured them for key factors, and then refrigerated them. A bit of the gas is removed each day, and measurements are retaken. This helps the research team help the farm team provide you with the freshest vegetables, herbs, and more with robustly delicious shelf lives.
Cover Crops and Flavor
At The Chef’s Garden, we use cover crops to enrich our soil, making it even more alive and vibrant. As we experiment with our cover crops to see how to optimize our soil further, our research team tells us how that influences the aroma and flavor of our vegetables. For example, we use more diversity in the cover crops we use now, with even better results.
More about Healthy Soil, Healthy Plants
Healthy soil contains healthy microbes, but little is known about how these microbes impact the flavor of crops being grown. So, our research team looks forward to adding to this knowledge as we culture microbes to see how we can improve color, aroma, and flavor.
Because our soil is active with microbes, “competitive exclusion” exists. In plain English, this means that some of the bad things we don’t want, such as some e coli bacterium, can’t gain a foothold. Why? Because there’s so much positive activity in our carefully tended soil that the bad stuff can’t take hold. It needs to go elsewhere, far away from the crops being grown at The Chef’s Garden.
Here’s another bonus to our regenerative farming techniques: Plants grown in healthy conditions (like at our farm) develop strong immune systems less susceptible to disease or insect problems. To keep our soil healthy and strong, we continue researching ways to improve it.
This philosophy and these techniques can be compared to conventional farming, which strips the soil of nutrients, creating an environment where crops can become sicker. Which is better? To us, the answer is clear.
For more info, here’s an in-depth post we created on this topic in honor of National Soil Health Day.
Setting the Bar High
Our on-site agricultural research lab and use of cover crops are anomalies. We don’t want to simply meet minimum standards—we want to be more than okay. We are establishing and following best practices, focusing on setting the bar even higher.
This isn’t the least expensive route, but it’s the right thing to do and well worth the investment.
We also set the bar high when it comes to food safety protocols. First, we have three cleaning cycles in our packing and shipping areas each and every day: at the start, middle, and end of the day.
We use 54 standard operating procedures (SOPs) to govern our farm’s growing practices and 58 additional SOPs to guide our packing and shipping facilities.
In addition to those 112 SOPs, we use PCR testing of the water to wash our produce—something that fewer than 1% of the farms in our country do. Add to that our cutting-edge air purification system by Extreme Microbial Technologist, which allows everything touched by air molecules to be sanitized in our packing and shipping areas, and you can see how seriously we take food safety at The Chef’s Garden.
A Final Thought
Here’s the thing. People typically believe that a carrot is a carrot is a carrot. Why not think that, right?
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Some carrots are limp with a flavor that reminds the diner of gnawing on cardboard. Others are somewhat better—in other words, they’re okay.
When regeneratively farmed in healthy soil, though, using the best of today’s science, a carrot can be wonderfully sweet, simply melting in your mouth.
Right now, we have the best-tasting carrot available, and we’re happy about that. But we think it can be even better.
We invite you to test this out for yourself today! Order one or more of our home delivery boxes for the freshest and most delicious vegetables. We farm in harmony with Mother Nature, providing our friends with the best the season has to offer.