Baby Steps From Farm To Plate

Pocket Greens helps enthusiasts, and more than a few top chefs, grow their own microgreens and baby vegetables

- Charlene Chow

What we learn of Eng Ting Ting’s keen business acumen one rainy morning, we glean more from the short car ride to town she kindly offers, than in the hour we spent at her farm in Bukit Panjang. Her company, Pocket Greens, teaches people how to grow their own greens; this includes selling seeds and vegetable growing kits, as well as conducting workshops, tours and talks. But her other business supplies shipping containers, a venture she dived into 16 years ago from a career in publishing and graphic design. She must have told the story many times over, but it sounded as fresh as day, the way she saw a niche in the container business, seized the day, and made a success of it.

SENSING OPPORTUNITY

It was the same knack for sniffing out opportunities that got her edible greens business off the ground almost a decade ago. Only this time, it involved something close to her heart. Born to orchid farmers, she always had green fingers and was used to reaping what the family sowed. “Even before the ‘farm-to-table’ concept was introduced, we were eating things we grew ourselves. On my parents’ orchid farm in Lim Chu Kang, we could go into the garden anytime, take durian, sweet potato or tapioca and make a dessert. My parents still live on a commercial orchid farm. My kids are lucky as we stayed there for some time and they got exposed to the natural environment. But we realised that most children in Singapore rarely know where their food comes from.”