Thanks Gina for sharing the experiences you have had working with Restaurants!

I have a question on the "Baby" items.  While they often bring in a higher price and have a shorter turn around, what is your take on the additional costs of labor and seed required for growing baby product?

Baby product (so far in my limited experience with some of it) seem to require far more time/care in handling to keep it really pretty and undamaged.

I tried doing some baby lettuce at one point but found that the extra time and care required to harvest and bag it pretty much ate up all extra profit and the expense of the seed and growing media was far greater for the same weight of mature product.

Any tips on harvest procedures for baby product to improve efficiency while keeping the product premium?

Hey TC, no problem! We found the same thing with lettuces as well but lettuce seemed to be the exception to the rule as it requires a bit more handling then most other items.  Things like baby carrots, beets, bok choy, cuke blossoms and baby Kale's and Chards have been hits with considerably less time from start to harvest and commanding a consistently better price while consuming less valuable time in the system.  There is minimal additional seed and starting costs as the same cost is incurred at least once for the same mature plant where as with baby varieties, an additional cost for two more seeds and the time to start them is negligible.  

As far as harvesting tips, into refrigeration immediately is key for most of these items, probably with the exception of the root crops.  But harvesting in non daylight hours and then quick refrigeration maintains the products integrity.  Things like cucumber blossoms are a bit more on the fragile side to deal with, but well worth it!

Ooh, root crops!!! Yea cause the mature carrots don't bring much and take so long anyway.

As for kale, collards and chard?????  Well I can see the benefit for the premium price on the baby stuff  if you are cutting the whole plant when you sell since they do take a long time.  However, certain types of kale, collards and chard can be harvested continually for months and months if planted in the right situation so I could be selling several ounces off a plant every week for months on end for the cost of a single seed/germination/transplant as opposed to the thousands of seeds/germination materials needed to produce 4 ounces of baby kale per week.  Granted, the kale, collards and chard take a far bit of space and I definitely don't like growing them in rafts.

Then again, the mature kale, collards and chard are completely different products meant for cooking, juicing or making chips etc while small (young tender) plants are something people can eat in salads and that is a major difference.

Benefit to growing baby crops is if you have a germination room at temperatures appropriate to the crop, you can often be growing them year round when the adult versions are not nearly so likely to thrive year round in a non, climate controlled facility.