What to know before adding a kitchen garden or PYO to your business

There’s a certain romanticism to growing your own. The very idea of it may conjure images of neat rows of frilly carrot tops, chickens ferreting around to remove pesky bugs, and mornings spent thoughtfully pulling weeds, a la The Good Life.

The cold hard truth of the matter though, for those who’ve been there and got the T-shirt, is it’s tough work. In order to turn a profit there must be careful planning, and forensic examination over the costs against projected income. But, get that right, and it truly can be rewarding. Not only is it the chance to offer customers a point of difference (lower food miles, higher nutrient values and seeing where their food has come from), but nurturing your own produce can be hugely positive for your team, who can tangibly, visible see the business growing.

Late summer/early autumn, is a prime time to start thinking about the year ahead if a PYO or kitchen garden proposition are on the cards. Space must be made, plotting, planning and digging carried out, and infrastructure built. Timing is especially pertinent if soft, orchard or vine fruits are your end game. These much prefer being dug in during the cooler months, and buying before December means you have the pick of the best canes, runners and root stock, rather than being lumbered with the ‘leftovers’ in the New Year.

How we got started

Ross Geach of Padstow Kitchen Garden grew up on a farm, tending to the land alongside his dad and grandad. He always had his hands deep in the soil, but a career in cheffing called, one which saw Ross working within the Rick Stein empire, leveraging himself to a head chef position. However, the farm kept luring Ross back, and 17 years ago he started growing produce in its walled garden, adding a polytunnel two years later.

Knowing how the restaurant game works, and what chefs need and when, stood him in good stead, and gave Ross an ‘in’ locally. “Sometimes chefs have farmers dropping off five boxes of lettuces instead of four, with the farmer telling them they’re ready and they have to sell them,” he says. To address this frustration amongst his peers, Ross would grow what the chefs needed, calling during service to check what he could supply. What began as a hobby is now a fully-fledged business, with him downing knives 11 years ago to operate the six-acre kitchen garden.

Over at Roots + Seeds Kitchen Garden in Cirencester, co-founders Toby Baggott and Sam Lawson-King spent the winter of 2022 converting a quarter of an acre equestrian area beside the restaurant/cafe they were to open in 2023, into a fruit and veg plot.

“This site was perfect for us,” says Toby, adding it gave them the chance to finally fulfil their long-held dream of growing their own fresh, seasonal produce to supply their restaurant kitchen and be as sustainable as possible.

How to set up a kitchen garden

“Growing your own produce doesn’t require a large plot of land,” says Toby. “We started with and continue to use our quarter of an acre site. In autumn 2022 we planned the layout to make the most of the prevailing sunshine and the least amount of wind. We created 12 large, raised outdoor beds, composting bins and a large polytunnel.”

To make the most of a polytunnel, Toby suggests, as they have, building in waist-high racks and deep growing shelves to make sowing seeds and potting up easier. Shelving provides extra space to overwinter tender crops, and to bring on summer produce such as chillies, peppers and salad leaves in a warmer, sheltered environment. The height “helps keep slugs and snails at bay too”.

Supplying a kitchen restaurant is quite a challenge, adds Toby, who says they decided to grow a broad range of produce across the year, including staples such as potatoes, onions, carrots, garlic and celery using a succession planting system. “By extending the growing season by succession planting, we can provide fresh produce for much of the year,” he explains, “and autumn harvests of onions, garlic and potatoes to use over the winter months. To give over as much site as possible to producing fruit and vegetables, we grow our herbs for the kitchen and flowers for the dining tables in raised planters, which edge and divide areas of our terrace and go along the sunnier sides of the building.” These “look absolutely gorgeous” and attract much-needed pollinators too.

Toby says composting needs to be factored in at the start of any project, with another area set aside for garden waste and fruit and vegetable scraps from the kitchen, which can rot down and be dug in during the next growing cycle.

Ross says you must be honest and brutal with yourself about what you’re growing before you put spade to earth. “There isn’t anything I haven’t tried to grow in the last five years,” he explains. “And I won’t grow anything that doesn’t make me money. You won’t believe the veg you can’t make a profit on.”

Stick to growing 10 things, he advises, adding that he’s learnt his lesson having unsuccessfully tried to grow more than 25 varieties of crop a decade ago. 

“You have to seriously consider whether it’s worth devoting time to something like a carrot. Bunches of carrots take a minimum of 12 weeks to be ready and you’ve got to weed twice and hope you don’t get carrot fly. Then you have to dig them up, wash them up and bunch them. You’re lucky if you get £2 a bunch, and you cannot make money on that.”

Carrots, Toby concurs, are tricky, and haven’t fared well this year for him because of the weather, alongside turnips, which had issues with flea beetles. It’s been a bumper year, though, for peas, courgettes, kohlrabi and spinach crops, which have thrived in the wet/warm conditions.

He heartily recommends adding these and legumes into your plans. “Legumes act as a nitrogen fixer and massively improve the soil quality. The trick is leaving the roots in the ground, and just cut them down to the lower stems when harvesting, rather than removing the whole plant.”

How to make money from a kitchen garden

Grow things that are ‘high end’. This is the strategy that works best for Ross, who adds that it’s also worth looking at plants that crop more than once to maximise profit potential. “For instance, we grow leafy cut-and-come-again greens – green kale, red kale, modern coloured kale, cavolo nero, rainbow chard. The ones we planted in May we are cutting now, and we’ll still be getting leaves in October. The ones we put in in summer will still be giving us leaves in December and January.”

His biggest trio of money-spinners, however, are tenderstem broccoli, padron peppers and courgette flowers. “Tenderstem is expensive in supermarkets because it’s more difficult,” Ross says. “You have to use a knife to cut it, you can’t go in with a machine. They will give you a megacrop of promoters, which will grow more plants, so they are well worth it!”

Padron peppers are one of the crops which get the full benefit of the extended growing conditions and season from time spent in a polytunnel. The peppers (which range from mild to hot) are being used both by chefs and home cooks looking to recreate that authentic tapas experience. Ross reports he’s managing to crop around 100kg a week in the polytunnel, alongside cut-and-come-again lettuces, which grow in just 28 days without requiring any weeding.

As for courgette flowers? In good condition (carefully looked after and picked in the morning as soon as they are ripe), each one can command around £2 to £3 or beyond, which soon adds up when you consider how productive courgette plants can be.

Advice for those thinking about adding a kitchen garden

1. “Consider what your customers actually want. Talk to them and find out what they will definitely buy. You can’t just plant things and depend on being a good salesman – that’s not how it works.” - Ross

2. “Polytunnels are the best way to make money, extending salad greens across the year.” - Ross

3. “Put in as many no-dig beds as possible. It costs more to begin with, but looking after them will give you good conditions, you won’t have to dig later, and you’ll have higher yields and less weeds.” - Ross

4. “Make sure you get the produce to the kitchen at the right time, when it’s fresh and at its prime. Our restaurant overlooks the kitchen garden, it’s also very rewarding to serve customers who can see where their food on their plate is growing from their tables.” - Toby

5. “Just do it! Have a go at sowing a few seeds. You’ll find you just keep learning as you go, and as things really start to take off, your confidence will grow too. But always be mindful of your mistakes and learn from them.” - Toby

The value of PYO

If you want to add value to your business, but a kitchen garden isn’t a suitable fit, how about pick-your-own (PYO)? This option, once you’ve made a start, is considered less labour intensive (after all, the customers will do the picking) and can be responsible for driving footfall, especially if you delve into the world of pumpkin patches – the perfect stop-gap crop to fill the void between the height of summer and Christmas.

Canalside Farm Shop in Stafford has been operating since the 80s, successfully running PYO strawberries, raspberries and pumpkins alongside the shop and cafe.

You can certainly tell when PYO is on and not on, says the farm’s Geoff Barton, who adds that pick-your-own rings at least 10% more revenue through the tills each weekend, making it the business’s highest footfall driver, and a very cost-effective experience for visitors.

Pumpkins were added around eight years ago, and Geoff says that’s been a more than worthwhile investment. “It feels like almost everyone is doing pumpkins now if they’ve got a bit of space,” he says. “We started doing it ultimately because our year seemed to end when the kids went back to school in September, and we kicked along into Christmas, then things picked up again in spring the following year. We had space, and saw how other people had been able to extend their sales year into deep in autumn just by having this extra experience, so we gave it a go one year.”

October is now the second best month for overall sales, which Geoff happily attributes to the activity. “It was definitely worth it and, with our 3D maize maze field, has become a real family attraction. It basically takes everything that works for us in summer, and translocates that into autumn.”

The challenges of PYO

The real challenge, says Geoff, is that everything will peak at the same time. That means success hinges on moving quickly and giving PYO the effort and attention it deserves as soon as the crops are ready – mobilising your team, and getting your promotion on site, online and on social media right. “All the focus will shift here, but it’s worth it for the spike in footfall. For the experience to run well, and for customers to get the best out of their visit we put on two extra people when we do strawberries in summer, and about three or four people for pumpkins in autumn.”

What should you consider before adding PYO to your business?

Geoff thinks you should think long and hard before you commit to anything. You need to think years ahead, not just trial a project for 12 months. “It can take some big capital up front, which you won’t get back immediately, but you will do in time if you do things the right way. We just spent a lot of money on refreshing our tunnels, working on 10 years to get payback for that. But that doesn’t take into account the other benefits – like the added footfall we will see, and more people visiting the cafe.”

An easy win for PYO is thinking about social media engagement and opportunities for customers to take pictures and share them while they are on site. Maybe putting up an attractive ‘selfie’ area. “Some of our best shared posts are people out picking strawberries or pumpkins. That’s free marketing and messaging for us!”

The benefits, he continues, far outweigh the work and costs. “Doing things like this on site gives us a shortcut into the customers’ minds. They get to understand our business, know what we’re about, how we grow, and the importance of local. They’re great for relationship and brand building and show customers how we are orientated…they’re an insight into our personality.”