Chicago Indoor Garden Podcast
In this episode, we speak with Colleen of Chicago Indoor Garden. Chicago Indoor Garden has been growing beans, greens, sprouts, and grasses in the heart of Chicago since 1987. They are certified organic and Non-GMO project verified. They are a small family-run farm and with only seven employees, almost half of whom are family members. They sell their products to all midwest whole food locations, local restaurants and juice bars, and grocers. You can find them at chicagoindoorgarden.com and find them on Instagram @chicagoindoorgarden.
Colleen shares with us how she switched careers from being a horse trainer to working with her family at the indoor garden. Also how the business has grown, some of the challenges and opportunities with COVID and navigating that with a new baby, and also the many delicious health benefits of eating fresh sprouts.
We discuss how indoor farming can just as challenging as outdoor farming in that equipment still needs to be repaired, soil still needs to be prepared, crops need to be tended and watered, and while to a lesser extent, weather affects the crops too.
“Just because you grow indoors doesn’t
mean its an exact science…
there are constant adjustments being made.”
The garden has not always been in the same location nor always owned by Colleen’s family. It has a very interesting background on how it got started. While her family has always been interested in health food, Colleen’s father first had a career as an owner of industrial packaging business who happened to be selling packaging to a woman who first owned the sprout business. The woman put the business up for sale around 2002 and Colleen’s father impulsively bought it.
“He always had an idea of being a farmer
or be involved in growing food.”
He quickly realized that he would need to devote all his energy towards the farm and ended up selling the packaging business to really focus on the farm full-time. He learned that it is important to be able to control the environment that the spouts are growing in, so he relocated the farm to a new building a few years later. He created a custom growing space for the sprouts, as well as a seed storage area. They have been there ever since.
Along the way they have made some changes to what they grow and how they operate, always looking for more ways to improve and learn.
“Even though we have been doing this for so long
we still go Whoa, that was cool!
You’d think we’d know it all by heart by now”
It was a joy to get to know Colleen and Chicago Indoor Garden. Everyone on the team takes pride in their work and it shows through the high-quality food that they work together to produce.
Listen to the episode
Show Notes:
1:13 Chicago Indoor Garden Introduction
2:40 Switching Careers
5:30 Sprouts vs. Microgreens and what Chicago Indoor Garden Grows Specifically
9:12 History of the Building the garden is in, moving locations
13:10 Growing indoors vs. outdoors
14:00 Weather affects indoor growers too to an extent
17:02 Important milestones, the process of being certified organic indoors
20:34 Adjusting to work and family life as a new mom during a global pandemic
23:42 Changes due to Covid
26:20 Demoing at Whole Foods, Places that they sell to
26:54 How their relationship with Whole Foods formed
28:23 Observations and changes in the organic and sustainable foods movement30:55 Healing with food
31:55 Health benefits of spouts
34:00 Cooking and preparing spouts
38:05 Keeping spouts fresh longer
Links:
http://chicagoindoorgarden.com/
https://www.instagram.com/chicagoindoorgarden/
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