From The Garden Of Uzo's Food Labs...

Our garden is doing all sorts of  wonderful things. What started out as a hobby in January this year has become  a growing business and another part of the Uzo brand. We sell our produce once a week and we now have 2 garden sites expanding everyday.

 

Here are some of the gorgeousness from our organic garden over the past few weeks

 

 

 

Sweet banana and jalapeno peppers

Turnip greens

Curly kale - the variety available in Lagos, We offer vegetable pots for sale like this kale pot so you can have a steady supply of kale for a few months

Forage premier kale

Experimenting with growing cauliflower. We have a head forming. Fingers crossed

Fresh basil dried and stored

Lima beans

Long rod okra

Curly kale pot on the way to its new home

Harvested lima beans

Cherry tomato coming through

Yellow pear tomatoes

Green bean flowers

Italian basil pots

Butter crunch lettuce

Black beauty egg plant

Carrot ready for harvest

Dill

Green beans ready to be picked

Sweet basil

Broccoli florets

Mixed produce basket for a client

Green beans

Interesting white and black speckled moth on zucchini leaves

Purple tomatillo plant growing

I am putting together a series of videos for the Youtube channel on gardening which will be fun, fun, fun.

 

I would love to hear from you - questions about the garden and produce. Please send emails to uzosfoodlabs@gmail.com

 

 

Enjoy!!!

From Uzo's Food Labs - #Gardentotable

 

I cannot begin to explain how busy we are on this end. Its a good thing however, the blog has obviously not been updated in a bit - one of the reasons is we are working on getting www.uzosfoodlabs.com up and running which means migrating all the content on this blog to the new site as well as adding all the other sections to the new site.

 

One project that has taken off in ways I did not quite expect - the garden and produce has gone into over drive mode and we now offer straight from the ground harvests for sale. The demand for the organic produce and people using the hashtag #gardentotable on social media has been overwhelming. This means we are expanding the garden so we can offer tasting bags for pickup once a week. Here are a few of the orders we filled in the last few weeks. 

 

 

I was also very privileged to sit on a panel with some amazing women talking #redefiningfinance on April 26th. It was a wonderful experience and I dare say life changing for some women based on the feedback we received.

For more information on the garden and produce and if you just ant to say hey or ask me any questions, send an email to uzosfoodlabs@gmail.com

Enjoy!!!

Exploring my Green Thumb

I have set myself a challenge for 2015. One of many. But this one is special because.......I am a notorious plant killer. I simply do not have a green thumb. I have tried to grow pretty flowers and they all died. I tried to grow cactus plants and bamboo things - which are supposed to be únkillable'. Well not in my case. They turned brown and turned moldy. I have tried culinary herbs - with limited success but nothing like the flourishing pictures online.

So I just gave up. However, a few months ago, I decided to revisit this matter. In my mind's eye, I see myself growing all sorts of fruits and vegetables. And herbs and flowers. And going from my garden to my food lab or into a pretty vase in the house. As a former management consultant and strategist, I decided to be methodical about this. I wrote out all the terrible things that happened to the plants and what I did to contribute or not contribute to their demise. And I saw some learning points. I went online and have subscribed to YouTube channels, bookmarked home gardening websites and I am ready.

Come January, I will be starting a greenhouse that I plan to grow culinary herbs, flowers, fruits and vegetables. My challenge is to try to grow as many things as possible including things that people have sworn will not thrive in Nigeria. I also hope to have good enough harvests - even if its 2 purple carrots at a time that I can challenge myself to use in my food lab. I will document this (mis)adventure on the blog and I honestly cannot wait.

In the interim, I decided to plant scent leaf/efinrin/nchawun/African basil as a test case. I use this herb a lot - in peppersoup, egusi soup, I add to yam porridge, white rice, fried stew and even to lemonade so it made sense to start with this.

Look at it!!!! I am so excited. There is hope for me afterall. Its doing so very well and I think this bodes well for my greenhouse project....

Enjoy!!!!