Petite Ingredient:Edible flower business in full bloom
WITH global orders pouring in from chefs, provedores and creative home cooks, Jocelyn Cross’s edible flower business is in full bloom. SARAH HUDSON reports.
YOU’VE heard of the nose-to-tail and paddock-to-plate trends.
If Jocelyn Cross has her way, the “root to bloom” movement will be the next big thing.
“It’s a concept we came up with to make the most of the lesser-known parts of the life cycle of a plant,” Jocelyn says.
“It’s about using the whole plant. So for example coriander seeds and flowers, as well as the stalks and leaves.”
In her new book Root To Bloom, co-authored with gardener Mat Pember, she goes so far as to say: “to think of coriander as a leaf is to think of a pig as bacon; it’s only one of its many parts”.
The concept has become patently obvious to Jocelyn in her edible flower and leaf business, Petite Ingredient, run out of a half-hectare greenhouse at Hoddles Creek in the Yarra Valley.
The 39-year-old, who started the enterprise from a small patch of dirt in 2011 growing about five varieties of flowers, says Petite Ingredient is now the biggest edible flower business in Australia, in range and turnover.
With help from a staff of 12, she grows flower varieties to produce about 50 fresh products, with viola the most popular, selling more than 20,000 punnets last year alone; followed closely by linaria blooms, pansy and a fresh confetti mix of petals.
All up she sells more than 100 product lines, with her dried category equally as in demand — particularly rose petals, as well as teas, crystallised flowers and sugars, edible seeds, such as nasturtium pods, petite vegetables including radish, carrots and beets, and heirloom seeds to grow in the garden.
The blooms are picked year round, six days a week, delivered to providores and chefs across Australia, with dried products sold through retailers and a smaller amount of dried and fresh products exported to countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The range is also sold online to the public and posted domestically and internationally.
“I don’t even do sales or marketing. Buyers just find me,” Jocelyn says. “Since I started it as a hobby, really, the customer base and revenue have doubled every year. It’s become such an incredible, unique business that it can only keep growing.”
Jocelyn attributes the success of Petite Ingredient to growing up on a cattle farm at Buxton, 100km northeast of Melbourne, where her frugal mother taught her to garden and make recipes from scratch.
She then studied interior design at RMIT, but “in another life I would have been a florist because I’ve always been obsessed with flowers”.
“But there was never enough of a design element in it for me to pursue floristry.”
When she spotted a growing trend for edible flowers in the US and Europe, Jocelyn and a friend in 2011 began growing roses, viola, nasturtium, pansies and snapdragons in a 30sq m garden bed, selling to the Melbourne wholesale markets. Jocelyn quickly went solo, juggling the flowers with her part-time role at an architect firm.
In 2013 she took a leap of faith, leased the half hectare low-tech, plastic greenhouse, which is on a larger citrus farm in the Yarra Valley, and focused full time on Petite Ingredient, growing year round in a controlled environment.
She says while her agronomist cousin has given invaluable advice on growing organically, much of the horticulture wisdom has come through trial and error.
“In 2013, my first big year, I lost more than 50 per cent of the yield during a 10-day heatwave, but I learnt that the greenhouse is on a slope and the lower end is 5C cooler than the top, so we grow at the top end in winter and the lower end in summer.
“I quickly learnt the right seasons to grow for maximum yield.”
Equally she has learnt what customers want through trial and error: white flowers are always popular and smaller blooms, “petunias for instance don’t sell so well”.
The plants are grown year round in the greenhouse. Jocelyn has 16 bays, 40m long each, where she plants just one variety, rotating annually to help soil regeneration.
At times, in between plant rotations, she will grow a quick mustard seed mix that acts as a natural fumigation to the soil, rotary hoed in to add nutrients.
She also has an outdoor garden plot for varieties — such as elderflower, scented pelargonium, chives, rosemary and fennel — that are not suitable to grow in greenhouse conditions.
For example elderflower, she says, grows on a small tree and “it will just get leggy in a greenhouse, whereas outside it can put more into growing flowers than long limbs”.
The majority of flowers are annuals, but there are many perennials including roses, many varieties of sage, chives, and geraniums, which she plants for two to three years to ensure they stay young and prolific.
Once a plant is at the end of its life, generally it is rotary hoed into the soil, to further add nutrients.
Soil is tested regularly to determine nutrient needs, with lime and nitrogen added to ensure pH of about 4-6.
Generally most plants don’t differ dramatically in nutrient needs, she says, although roses — of which there are currently 800 bushes — are “hungry” and every two weeks are fed an organic pellet.
“From October to May we take incessant care of them,” she says.
In contrast, viola is a relatively low-maintenance plant, flowering year round, with new plants replanted every few months to ensure high yields are maintained.
Linaria is planted out monthly as it “either goes berserk or shrivels in the heat”; pansy is a slow grower and is planted out less often.
Because plants can be susceptible to fungal diseases and pests such as aphids and cabbage moth, they receive organic, food-safe sprays that have a zero withholding period, “which means you can spray them and they’re still immediately safe to eat”.
Water needs of each variety also differ, with rain captured from the greenhouse roof, stored in a dam and pumped into drip irrigation.
Not surprisingly, Jocelyn has a complex spreadsheet to keep on top of growing seasons and plant needs, adding that while the greenhouse operates year-round in winter they don’t pick every day.
Pickers pick to order, delicately pinching off flowers at the stem using their hands. Flowers are placed in a tub, taken to the coolroom maintained at 4-6C and are dispatched on the same day in one of two punnet sizes: shallow for small buds, deep for larger flowers.
Petals not sold to order are picked and plucked before being dried in a commercial dryer and sold in small or large jars.
Petite Ingredient doesn’t sell by the gram, because flowers are so light — “they weigh nothing” — selling up to 10,000 punnets or jars per month.
Flower teas, crystallised flowers and sugars are also made on-site.
Through her cookbook and on her website, Jocelyn inspires customers to use her pretty petals in recipes, such as US-style glazed doughnuts, coriander flower liqueur and elderflower cordial.
“People still don’t understand how to use edible flowers,” she says. “That’s why I’ve called the business Petite Ingredient, because it’s not a garnish, they are an ingredient and do have a flavour profile.”
Jocelyn has a son, Harry, nearly 3, and was last year diagnosed and successfully treated for breast cancer. While these experiences have shown her there is more to life than work, her love of flowers has not diminished.
“My family and friends know I don’t like chocolates. In hospital during my treatment the nurses would come into my room and say they had never seen so many flowers.
“There’s a terrible misconception that flower growers don’t like receiving flowers. But flowers are my favourite thing.”
FARM FILE: Petite Ingredient
Jocelyn Cross runs Petite Ingredient, growing edible flowers in a greenhouse covering half a hectare at Hoddles Creek. She sells fresh blooms and petals for $12.95 a punnet, dried petals, buds and flowers for $9.95 a jar, crystallised flowers for $24.95 a jar and floral teas for $11.95 a jar.
Where: Hoddles Creek, Yarra Valley
More info: petiteingredient.com.au
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