Here's What It Takes to Grow Your Favorite Foods

(victory yelp)

Howdy!

I'm Tyler Mackiven of bon appetit,

Grub Guru and Food Explorer.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to grow the food

that ends up on your plate?

Well today we're at Route1farms,

which is just north of Santa Cruz, California,

and we are going to investigate,

Cover! (explosion) Hard-to-grow-foods.

A-ha-ha, the elusive almond.

They're delicious.

They're so easy to eat.

But they're actually really hard to grow.

Each one of these almonds takes 1.1 gallons of water.

So that means that these 12 almonds here,

that's over 12 gallons of water.

Almonds require mild, wet winters, and hot dry summers.

Without these perfect conditions,

we wouldn't have these brown morsels of goodness.

(twangy guitar music)

A-ha, well lookie lookie.

Avocado.

How did it get here?

The avocado, also known as the alligator pear.

It takes 37 gallons of water to grow each one.

That's equivalent to a 17 minute shower.

Whoa, so something interesting to think about

next time you take a bite

of this delicious alligator pear greenness.

(bass guitar)

My my, look what we have here.

A good head of lettuce is at the center

of every great salad.

But a lot goes into making this lettuce,

it requires 45-50 days of sunshine,

3.5 gallons of water to grow each head.

If the weather fluctuates too much,

it can lead to bolting, and you don't want that

because it makes it taste bad.

And we want it to taste good.

(lively music)

(victory yelp)

Celery, this serves as the base

for that childhood-friendly snack ants-on-a-log.

It also serves as the base

for the adult-friendly, Bloody Mary.

Celery requires very frequent watering,

and temperatures between 60 and 75 degrees.

For a growing period of 90 to 120 days.

Celery requires a lot of TLC.

Don't we all?

(ding) Time to water again.

Boolah!

(light, upbeat music)

Somewhere in this field of kale there is, a-ha-ha!

What we have here, a head of cauliflower.

Easy to make taste good.

A little bit of salt, some olive oil, and boom, delicious.

But it's actually really hard to grow.

Cauliflower required cool, consistent temperatures

of approximately 60 degrees,

at least six hours of sunlight a day,

very finicky, but really cool looking.

(crunching) Brains!

(dramatic action music)

(tractor motor roaring)

Yeehoo, alright folks!

Hope you had as much fun as I did,

investigating these hard-to-grow-foods.

Don't forget to subscribe

to the bon appetite YouTube channel,

and I'll see you around on the farm.

Yeehoo, whoa!

(dramatic, action music)