Chef Ben Vidmar has started a revolution in the most Northerly town in the world, Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. He had a vision 6 months ago that it was possible to cultivate locally grown produce in his high Arctic wonderland and went on a search for the best available growing system.
He settled on the AutoPot easy2grow system and hasn’t looked back since.
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“I am really enjoying the system and am having great success with my setup,” Ben told us recently. “When I started this project 6 months ago, I was hungry for the freshest locally grown produce available to serve in my kitchen. By growing some of the produce that is required locally, I hope to find a more sustainable way to run my kitchen and I strongly feel that shipped vegetables can never be as fresh as vegetables that are grown locally.”
Since starting his project in October 2012, Ben’s company Polar Productions has become an official wholesaler of AutoPot products and Ben is operating a fully-functioning easy2grow 60Pot set-up, which he has used to grow salad, tomatoes, eggplant, chillies and herbs – all of which he is selling locally at his place of work, the Svalbard Pub AS.
Prior to this, all produce had to be either shipped or flown in from overseas.
“Nothing can be better than picking fresh vegetables from my garden and serving them the same day to my guests!”
What makes this project unique to any other that AutoPot have been involved in, is its location – Svalbard is located just 500 miles away from the North Pole, with sub-freezing average temperatures and nearly four months of Polar night in the winter period.
Ben is now busy organising his greenhouse in preparation for the busy season and looks forward to working with very fresh salad from his garden in the near future.
For more information on what Chef Ben is up to in the high Arctic, please visit www.sprock3t.com.
