Re: [permaculture] Re: [CH] LIVe Wasabi In Berkley???!!

Charles Demas (demas@tiac.net)
Wed, 11 Feb 1998 11:23:46 -0500 (EST)

> Does anyone know of an Australian Grower of Wasabi?

Turns out I was a little off about Wasabi and Australia, it was 
New Zealand.

I dug out some posts from Dejanews about growing wasabi and where it's
available fresh.  I've put them below.  I hope this answers some 
of those questions.  FWIW, I was right about the Oregon grower, and they
were from Washington State University.  :-)


Chuck Demas
Needham, Mass.

Subject:      Wasabi
From:         paulr@mcgovern.co.nz
Date:         1997/08/21
Message-ID:   <872118897.27378@dejanews.com>
Newsgroups:   alt.food.sushi

some time ago there was a discussion on the benefits of fresh wasabi ( as
opposed to the powder etc). I thought people might be interested in a new
site in New Zealand ( yes is does exist !) telling the story of how Jenny
and Michel Van Mellaerts, a couple with a few acres of land tried and
tried again to frow fresh wasabi hydroponically.
I should declare an interest - my partner and I  made their site - but
hopefully people will accept this is not a gratutious post - we did it
because we were geniuninly impressed by their determination and
committment. People might like to check their story at
http://www.wasabi.co.nz


Subject:      Re: Wasabi!
From:         Michel Van Mellaerts <mgjvm@voyager.co.nz>
Date:         1997/10/28
Message-ID:   <345684CC.87D506E5@voyager.co.nz>
Newsgroups:   alt.food.sushi

For a really interesting article on growing wasabi, you need to go and see the
web site <<http:www.wasabi.co.nz>>. This company has been growing wasabi in
clean green New Zealand for seven years and are able to offer the world a New
Zealand Wasabi paste, organically grown at a reasonable price, that will keep
in the fridge for immediate use when required.

>From experience, unless you are going to use your fresh wasabi very quickly,
you end up with an expensive mushy vegetable in the fridge that you can't use
and have to throw away. So while it might be nice to have fresh wasabi to
impress people, 99% of all wasabi users will not want the hassle of grating the
rhizome, and having to throw away the paste in an hour if it has not been used.
Even the expensive restaurants in Japan use powdered wasabi these days.


Subject:      Wasabi!
From:         "Ferol Jones" <ferol@ziplink.net>
Date:         1997/10/19
Message-ID:   <01bcdce5$ea02ba00$c67fc4d0@ferol>
Newsgroups:   alt.food.sushi

Greetings!

I just was catching up with my reading of the secondary articles of this
past week's Wall Street Journal's and found the following headline: "West
Coast Wasabi".  The article was on page A21 of the 10/15/97 edition and was
written by Melissa A Trainer.  The article explains that Thomas Lumpkin,
chairman of  the Dept. of Crop and Soil Sciences at Washington State
University has spearheaded a program to grow wasabi in the Pacific
Northwest.  It's a fascinating article!

Apparently, real estate developer Roy Carver has started T-Bar Ranch, a
high-tech wasabi farm in Florence, Oregon, to help meet wasabi demand in
Japan.  And, (here's the really exciting part) a former grad student of
Lumpkin's, Catherine Chadwick, is growing wasabi for the West Coast market.
 Phone orders for the next harvest (January) are now being taken:
International Trade & Marketing Group at (408) 626-3901 from 9 a.m. to 4
p.m. PDT.

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