Where to find Verdant Kitchen products:
Farmers Markets
• Decatur Farmers Market
• Peachtree Road Farmers Market
• Grant Park Farmers Market
• East Atlanta Village Farmers Market
• Avondale Estates Farmers Market
• Marietta Square Farmers Market
Atlanta specialty stores
• Savi Provisions
• Roswell Provisions
• Star Provisions
• Preserving Place
• Chateau Elan Winery
• Garnish and Gather
A stroll around Peachtree Road Farmers Market reveals some of Atlanta’s finest craftsmen and farmers. This time of year, the crates are overflowing with leafy greens and mounds of winter squashes. Verdant Kitchen fuses together the labors of farming with the handmade attention necessary in artisan products to focus on one superfood: ginger.
This is the star ingredient in all of the private company’s specialty products. The history of Verdant Kitchen’s beginnings two years ago is rooted in faith and the constant upkeep of one of the South’s rare organic ginger farms.
Turning ginger into products has turned into a profitable business for the company’s founders, Ross Harding and Howard Morrison. The company has doubled production on their farm each year and doubled its staff to 20 people. They sell their products at six Atlanta farmers markets and numerous specialty food stores.
“Verdant Kitchen’s success is the reward of a great product, tireless marketing and willingness to seek out supportive partners,” said Donn Cooper of Georgia Organics. Verdant Kitchen has been a member of the non-profit since it began selling products.
The idea for Verdant Kitchen grew from a conversation Harding and Morrison had about leaving the corporate world, where they were partners in biomass engineering. A native of Brisbane, Australia, Harding recognized that ginger was a thriving agro-tourism industry in his homeland. He remembered brewing ginger beer under the house with his grandfather, buying ginger candies at the store and spreading ginger marmalade on toast. Ginger’s health benefits made it more appealing — it is used for its anti-inflammatory properties and to fight nausea.
The men were determined to grow their crops naturally and organically, despite the inherent challenges. They spent two years of blind experimentation using a test plot on the grounds of Morrison’s private home in Savannah, Lebanon Plantation. The 500-acre plantation was acquired by Morrison’s grandfather, Mills B. Lane, in the early 1900s. A weathered barn was all that remained of the plantation’s active farm work, where indigo dye, mulberries and rice were once grown.
“Growing ginger organically and producing a good yield without pesticides or chemicals is stressful on the crops,” Harding said. “The ginger fights harder, but the payoff is the ginger is extremely flavorful.”
Every aspect of agriculture was documented from soil conditions and pH, to drip irrigation and climate conditions. And since growing methods were similar, Harding and Morrison planted turmeric and galangal, also members of the rhizome family, to see how the crops could be utilized. Once the pair felt confident, they increased the seed supply in an effort to create Verdant Kitchen’s ginger products. Now their products have expanded from ginger beer and ginger snaps to other snacks and beverages like candied ginger, ginger mint tea and ginger honey.
The first seed crop failed. In a bind, they struck a deal with the Savannah Whole Foods Market: they would supply fresh ginger for the market to sell, and Whole Foods Market would supply Verdant Kitchen with 50 percent of their seed crop.
“We are still trying to figure out what works for us here,” Morrison said. “We aren’t interested in harvesting pounds of ginger just to sell it, we want quality.”
Much like grapes, ginger has a terroir. Lebanon Plantation is near the coast and mirrors Australia’s the subtropical climate. The sandy soils lend to an intense citrus smell and flavor, and high rainfall and humidity allow ginger to thrive.
In December and January, Verdant Kitchen will prepare for harvest season. Workers hand-pick the crops, now dead and barren of foliage, using broad forks to pull the roots from the ground. The roots are then hand-washed, a tedious process that Harding describes as similar to washing a Rubik’s cube. Harvesting takes three months, whereupon a portion of the ginger root is replanted in late March to grow for another nine months.
Within two days of harvesting, the ginger, turmeric and galangal is brought to a quaint, white cottage that is home to Verdant Kitchen’s USDA-certified organic production kitchen. The roots are dehydrated in a temperature and humidity-controlled room. After dehydration, the roots are powdered and shipped to the company’s production facility in Atlanta. A majority of the ginger, 90 percent, is turned into the products that are sold, while the remaining fresh root is sold to Savannah’s Whole Foods Market.
“It was never our goal to just grow fresh ginger. We wanted to create value-added products that would last throughout the year,” Harding said. “We now produce thousands of pounds of organic ginger, turmeric and galangal and new crops are in the ground for expansions for our 2015 season.”
