Evesham-based plant propagation business HumberVHB and Westland Nurseries scooped the Salad Grower of the Year award at the national Grower of the Year Awards ceremony held in London on February 22.
The prize was awarded for the company’s Microleaf product, which are miniature young plants or young versions of salad leaves and herbs. The product, which according to the company is tender, colourful and often intensely flavoured, can be eaten whole and is produced without using pesticides.
Introduced in the US in the mid-1990s by the three Michelin star French Laundry Co, and supplied by Chefs Garden, Microleaf caught the imagination of Martin Boers from Westland Nurseries. He visited the US to see firsthand how popular the product had become, and then back in the UK set about trialling the salad on matting on the floor of his plant propagation unit.
“The results were so impressive I then decided to build a unit specifically to grow Microleaf, and three years later had built a six-acre, state-of-the-art unit which was fully automated with watering, heating and lighting all computerised, and the entire site run by just one manager and two support staff,” Boers said.
To help market the new business, he joined forces with HumberVHB, a UK retail market leader in the fresh herb and salad cress categories based in East Yorkshire and West Sussex.
“Many Microleaf varieties contain a higher concentration of phytochemicals per gram than can be found in more mature versions of the plant,” said Boers. “Some of the varieties have therefore been classed as superfoods.”
Over the last 12 months, HumberVHB and Westland Nurseries have successfully grown over 30 varieties of Microleaf, including both herbs and salad. “Commercially we are now supplying some of the country’s top restaurants with Microleaf, and are also supplying products for inclusion in premium mixed bagged salads in Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s,” added Boer. The firm has also launched a range in the latter supermarket called Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Living Seedlings.
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