A couple of days ago an idea just came to me: Why don’t we dedicate a couple of our growing houses solely to Research and Development for our partner-in-good-food Chef Alan Wong?

Most of the time we focus on growing what we think might be popular in the supermarkets. But here we will plant things strictly for fun; just because we’re curious and because Chef Alan might be able to use them in his restaurants. He will make suggestions and we’ll try other new and interesting things as well. He is excited about this project and so are we. This is going to be great fun.

Today we started looking at what we could plant. How about long, short, round, striped and mini eggplants to start? What’s a tomatillo, exactly? Let’s try all the types. What about peppers—hot, sweet, long, mini, chocolate, white, whatever. Colored beets. Asparagus—thin, stout, purple, green and white. All things bean. Different colors and textures. Whatever else strikes our fancy.

Tomorrow we start germinating seeds. I’ll post here periodically about how our Chef Alan Wong R&D project is coming along.