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Cardoon: The High‑Value Hydroponic Crop Michelin Chefs Crave · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  I'm your host, Dr Russell Sharp, the founder of Utrema Ltd.
• 0:09
  At Utrema, we manufacture interesting fertilisers, novel biostimulants and organic
• 0:14
  biopesticides, so check them out on utrema.co.uk.
• 0:18
  Today I wanted to talk about another crop that I think could make a tremendous crop for a start-up.
• 0:25
  So a small to medium-sized hydroponic company,
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  whether that's in a greenhouse but probably more in a
• 0:31
  grow room this would be particularly suited to
• 0:34
  somebody or a company that was looking to diversify away
• 0:38
  from growing legal cannabis because this crop requires
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  a lot of height and so
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  it's not one for a vertical farm it's cardoon if
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  you've ever come across cardoon it is like a giant
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  thistle and has massive
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  leaves and produces big massive thistle spikes
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  like globe artichoke however unlike
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  globe globe artichoke you don't have to go to through
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  to flowering you only have
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  to produce the young vegetative stems because
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  that's what is consumed when it comes to cardoon so it's
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  related to globe artichoke in fact is in the same species
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  as globe artichoke however it's a different variety
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  so cardoon they're both in the
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  sayonara sayonara sounds japanese
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  isn't it cardoonuculus and so
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  i think it's better than globe artichoke as a crop
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  and the reason i say that is because potentially it's a really good one that
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  a small hydroponic company could pitch to mitchellin star restaurants high-end
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  restaurants And that's because cardoon is used in a number of different dishes.
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  High-end dishes, but particularly in Lyonnais cuisine. So...
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  Food that comes from the city of Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France.
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  Cardou Lyonnaise refers to a dish where the stalks of cardou,
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  the petioles, the leaf stalks, rather than the stem, not really a stem,
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  are cooked often with gratin or a similar fashion.
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  It's a speciality of the Lyon region.
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  So you're going to get Michelin star chefs who have been trained in Lyon,
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  who will recognize this plant and crucially
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  it's not available commercially apart from
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  in France so if you're outside of France
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  you can you could grow cardoon now if
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  you're growing this elsewhere and you think that's different then
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  let me know but the beauty of this is that because you'd be growing it in a
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  grower room you could have multiple plants you could have them growing at different
• 2:48
  points and you could have fresh cardoon stalks throughout the year and whereas
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  normally it's a plant that grows.
• 3:00
  Grows really fast in the spring in the late autumn spring
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  and then dies off early summer
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  once it's flowered and then goes completely under the
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  ground and so you're probably only going
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  to get fresh cardoon in late autumn
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  through the winter into spring and so i've had cardoon in my front garden for
• 3:21
  about 10 years now it's a fantastic plant grows ridiculously fast so So simply
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  the biomass you can produce is crazy.
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  So I think it'd be a fantastic one for hydroponics because you could even,
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  you know, hydroponics even double the growth rates.
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  It doesn't suffer too many pests and disease, a bit of aphids,
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  some thrips when it gets to flowering.
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  But with cardoon, you don't even need to get it with hydroponics for this use.
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  You don't even need to allow it to flower necessarily.
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  So that saves you a lot of hassle, saves you the thrip issue,
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  and you can divert resources through to
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  stalk production leaf production produces these
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  absolutely gigantic leaves produces a very thick rhizome in the ground that
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  can be used for propagation you just chop that up and you get loads of new plants
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  so you don't even need to buy the seeds you can just get a mature plant dig
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  it up and chop up the rhizomes,
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  I've actually got rid of my cardoon, but, well, I'm trying to get rid of it.
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  I've chopped it up, buried it in the ground amongst the other plants that I've
• 4:27
  been planting, and it's reappearing.
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  It wants to regrow that fast. So I'm currently dealing with trying to kill cardoon at the moment.
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  So yeah, it's a good crop. If you specialized in cardoon, you could even branch
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  out into globe artichokes once you got all the system sorted.
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  Got the nutrition dialed in, things like this.
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  You could also sell the plants for ornamental use to
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  garden centers and things like this and it's used
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  it's actually part of it the plant is used in in cheese
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  production for production of rennets and enzymes however that's
• 5:01
  a very niche use it's consumed in the
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  cuisine of southern italy as well so sicily so if
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  you've got any sicilian neighborhoods diaspora
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  around you perhaps in new york then but
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  then this could be a potentially a good crop to grow so i
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  think it suits those sorts of grow rooms where legal cannabis or
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  even illegal cannabis is grown a good
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  diversification away from that if the cannabis industry in
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  your area has gone through the floor then prices
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  have dropped then cardoon would be a fantastic one
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  and obviously if it's michelin star restaurants then they will pay a
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  high price for authentic fresh cardoon.
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  An interesting one there for you a startup idea if it
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  comes to anything you make millions from this then remember who told you
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  about car dude in the first place it was dr russell sharp of
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  utreema.co.uk and the least you could do for
• 5:52
  me sharing this amazing business idea with you is that
• 5:55
  you could give hydroponics daily a five-star written
• 5:58
  review on apple podcasts make sure you click follow
• 6:01
  and if you're not on apple podcasts then just check
• 6:04
  out utreema.co.uk because we have amazing fertilizers that can be used for hydroponics
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  it can be used for growing cardoon we have biostimulants to make that cardoon
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  grow even faster and if you do get thrips or aphids or any other pesto disease.
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  On your cardoon then we do biopesticides as well we manufacture them in-house ourselves,
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  But I have never had a disease on my car dunes in 10 years of growing them.
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  And the one pest I do get a lot of is snails. Not slugs, snails.
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  And my solution for that, as well as slugger, which we sell at Eutrema,
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  is just to pick them up and throw them into the road for the cars.
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  I'll crush them under my feet.
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  Sounds cruel, but mollusks can feel pain.
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  They're one of the few pests that can feel pain. Because they're mollusks.
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  They contain opioid receptors.
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  So you have to kill them quickly if you're going to kill them.
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  You can't let them suffer.
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  A bit of a tangent there. Before I get into more controversial areas, I will leave it at that.
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  Thank you very much for listening to Hydroponics Daily, and I will see you again tomorrow.