Why Our Salad Mix is More Than Just Delicious
At Bare Acre Farm, we’ll begin harvesting our popular Salad Mix this week, and it will appear on our shelves and in our produce boxes this coming weekend. But aside from great taste and freshness, there’s another major difference between our salad — grown in rich, living soil — and the majority of supermarket salads, which are often grown hydroponically in vast commercial greenhouses.
Let’s talk about that difference, because it matters.
Commercial vs. Organic: Not All Salad Is Created Equal
The salads you find in most supermarkets are produced on a huge scale, often using synthetic fertilisers, chemical pesticides, and hydroponic growing systems. These methods are designed for speed, uniformity, profit margin and shelf life — not flavour or nutrition. The leaves might look good, but they’ve been grown in a highly controlled, often sterile environment, usually far from the farm-to-fork ethos we espouse here at Bare Acre.
On our farm, we do things differently. We grow organically, which means we don’t use synthetic chemicals. Instead, we build healthy soil using compost, green manures, and careful crop rotation. That healthy soil is the foundation of every leaf we harvest — it’s where the nutrition begins. And because our salad is grown right here in the heart of North County Dublin, it doesn’t spend days in transit or weeks in cold storage before it reaches your plate.
Soil vs. Hydroponics: A Deeper Kind of Nourishment
Most supermarket salad is grown hydroponically — that means in water, not soil. The plants are fed a liquid nutrient solution and never touch real earth. While hydroponics has its advantages in terms of yield and resource efficiency, it comes with nutritional trade-offs.
Living soil, by contrast, is a dynamic, complex ecosystem. It’s full of microbial life — bacteria, fungi, and tiny organisms that work together to break down organic matter and make nutrients available to plants. This biological activity allows plants to absorb a broad spectrum of trace elements naturally found in soil: magnesium, calcium, boron, zinc, copper, selenium, iron, and more.
These minerals are essential to human health — involved in everything from immune support to brain function to energy metabolism. But hydroponic systems, however sophisticated, simply can’t replicate the complexity of nature. The liquid feed used in hydroponics contains the basics needed for plant growth, but it often lacks the trace elements present in soil-grown crops.
It’s a bit like the difference between fast food and a home-cooked meal — one keeps you going, the other helps you thrive.
Taste the Difference. Feel the Difference.
So why does our salad taste better? It’s not just the freshness. It’s the slow, steady growth in a healthy soil ecosystem. It’s the deeper roots, the wider nutrient palette, and the lack of chemical interference. Each variety in our mix is chosen for flavour, texture, and resilience — not just how well it travels in a plastic bag.
We grow for nourishment. For vitality. For the kind of food that feeds both body and soul.
This weekend, when you pick up your Bare Acre Salad Mix — whether it’s in your produce box or on our farm shop shelves — you’re choosing more than salad leaves. You’re choosing food grown with integrity, rooted in the land, and bursting with life.
