Get to Know Piedmont Microgreens
September 20, 2024 Looking for a way to get into the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) industry, but want to start small? Growing microgreens is probably your best bet.
During the week of the inaugural CEAg World Conference and Expo in August 2024, a few members of the CEAg World team toured Piedmont Microgreens, an indoor farm in Durham, North Carolina. We met the owner and co-founder, Garrett Corwin, who explained how he was limited to growing microgreens as a recent college graduate.
“The choice to grow microgreens was really made for me based on my conditions in the beginning,” he said. “I tell people that it’s the illusion of choice. Yes, there are other things I could have grown, but I just didn’t have the resources or the space to grow other things.”
Corwin started growing microgreens in his parents’ basement in 2020, then in his own home when he closed on a house the following June. He moved to a 1,900 square-foot office space in April 2024, and he was back in business after turning it into an indoor farm.
Building an indoor farm is no easy undertaking, no matter how small the space is. Corwin had to make some hefty renovations to the office building to create the right conditions for growing. This includes pulling up the old carpeting, dropping the ceiling, rebuilding the ducting, adding spigots for hoses, and adding electrical for grow lights and refrigerators.
“The only thing we kept was the bathroom,” he said. “We stripped out the space and made it a fancy box with some electrical and some plumbing.”
Growing Different Mixes of Microgreens
Piedmont Microgreens currently offers six products for retail sales: taco mix, spicy salad mix, sunflower shoots, pea shoots, broccoli microgreens, and nutrition mix. While several product names describe themselves, Corwin put some thought into naming each microgreens mix.
“When we first started, it was a matter of having our bases covered,” Corwin said. “We knew it made sense to have a spicy option and a mild option. When you think of fresh produce, you think of something that’s more mild, like a mature head of broccoli. Then you have things that are spicier, like your mustard and your radish.”
Recently, he started naming products based on use cases, as shown by his taco mix blend that consists of cilantro, cabbage, and radish microgreens. “I have probably never used it on a taco, but when it shows up on a grocery shelf, it already gives the consumer a possible use case,” he said. He hopes to create a pesto blend in the future, which would contain microgreens like basil, arugula, and broccoli.
Corwin has considered expanding Piedmont Microgreens into the unit next door once the tenants’ lease is up in about two and a half years. His family already owns it, so it would be easy for him to grow his business without moving to a new location entirely.
To learn more about Piedmont Microgreens, visit the company’s website and follow them on Instagram at @piedmontmicrogreens.