The Family Garden

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Rebecca Harper and her family literally live by the phrase 'eat what you grow' — the result of developing their own backyard farm and producing hydroponic herbs in The Family Garden for the past three years. Hydroponic farming uses a totally different method from natural farming; plants are grown using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil.

Thursday Food recently journeyed to Jack's Hill to visit the Harpers, who shared their decision to not only start eating healthy — the result of discovering that so many of the herbs available locally were actually imported — but to produce their own herbs and vegetables without the use of soil. To accomplish this, the Harpers relied heavily on the Internet search engine Google and social website YouTube. "We basically learnt everything we needed to know about hydroponic farming from Google and watching YouTube videos," Rebecca told Thursday Food. "Neither my husband nor I have a career anywhere near to farming. He's a metal fabricator and I am in the education industry. However, we both share a passion for eating healthy and growing it ourselves." Rebecca is also proud to share that all the equipment used on the farm were bought in Jamaica and assembled by the couple.

The Family Garden currently produces arugula (rocket), basil, cilantro, dill, garlic, chives, parsley, stevia (sugar plant), mint and watercress. Each herb — save for the dill — takes a minimum of six weeks to grow. Dill takes a little while longer before it can be harvested. Arugula, dill, basil and cilantro are sold as living plants in supermarkets. These plants remain fresh for seven to 10 days after they are sold.

Passionate about her herbs, Rebecca is quick to defend the benefits of hydroponic farming and outlined a few of these benefits to Thursday Food: water remains in the system and can be reused, thus reducing water costs; pests and diseases are easier to get rid of than in soil because of the container's mobility. Another advantage is that the plants are easier to harvest, and yield no pesticide damage. In fact, The Family Garden does not use pesticides. Instead, they utilise an organic spray. The Harpers believe that farming is the way forward for Jamaica. So much so that even their children have bought into the idea and have developed their mini-herb farms, from which they reap the benefits of the harvests.

Currently, The Family Garden herbs are available at MegaMart, Loshusan, Sovereign Supermarket, General Foods, John R Wong and Hi-Lo.

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The Family Garden