Online, Naturally

There won’t be any organic kohlrabi to pick through online, but WholeFoods.com does hope to entice you with thousands of other natural foods.

The Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market folks have created what they bill as “the most comprehensive natural foods site on the Internet.” All you cyber foodies can get your first look at the new electronic commerce Web site when it is launched March 22.

The company announced Monday that it will offer the trademark Whole Foods Market product mix, with about 6,000 items available upon its launch and an additional 10,000 goodies to come online soon thereafter.

“Most of the things that you see in the grocery aisles, we will be offering,” said Carl Morris, president of WholeFoods.com.

There will be seven grocery product classifications: cans and jars; coffees and beverages; fruits, nuts and jams; mixes and meals; snacks; spices and condiments; and assorted staples.

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Another big category will be health and body care, such as vitamins, minerals and herbs. There will also be environment-friendly cleansers, paper goods and pet goods.

Whole Foods markets offer a wide selection of wines, but don’t expect to shop online for a nice merlot any time soon. Red tape and taxes will delay WholeFoods.com’s entrance into the cyber wine market for now, though Morris said online sales will happen in the future.

As patrons of the Thousand Oaks outlet will attest, a visit to Whole Foods Market reveals lavish displays of organic produce, meats, baked goods and deli fare. Much of this, however, will not be available online.

“If you send a perishable you almost always have to ship it overnight and then you start getting into big shipping costs,” Morris said. Shipping will be through UPS, and will range from one- to five-day service.

Some fresh foods will be offered, he said, including chocolates, gourmet cheeses, gift baskets with fresh fruits, fancy organic fruits and possibly seafood.

This could make your pocketbook happy: Morris said nutritional products like vitamins, supplements and herbs will be heavily discounted online. And: “On the grocery side, I would say 90% of the products will be at lower cost than [at] our stores,” Morris said.

The Web site will ultimately feature thousands of pages of content related to natural foods. Coming in April there will be chat rooms and forums where visitors can discuss a range of topics.

“We’re trying to draw our customers into conversations with [each other] as well as with us about topics that are in the realm you would consider Whole Foods-oriented,” Morris said.

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Somis-based specialty produce purveyor Underwood Farms has added another item to its impressive array of goods: asparagus.

Now that might not move your earth, but consider that the verdant spears are grown in Moorpark--and that makes Underwood Farms the only commercial asparagus grower in Ventura County.

According to the California Asparagus Growers Assn., the state’s coastal region and the delta area in Northern California are home to much of the nation’s supply of asparagus. In Ventura County, though, asparagus has been been passed over in favor of crops that offer a greater return on the farming investment.

Underwood’s asparagus plants were sown 18 months ago on three-quarters of an acre at Tierra Rejada Ranch, said Russell Blades of Underwood Ranches. The inaugural harvest has been on the market for about three weeks and will be around for only another month or so. More mature plants would be left to produce for several months to come, he said.

To prepare for harvest season, the fern-like, bushy plant is “chopped down to nothing, right down to the ground,” Blades said. “And then the shoots of asparagus will start to come.”

And they come rapidly. In just a matter of days, the spears are ready to be harvested. Each spear is sliced off just below the surface with a hand-wielded knife. “These plants are left in the ground to produce year after year. So we want to stop early and give them a chance to regrow and bush out,” he said.

Blades offered these tips when purchasing asparagus:

Choose spears with firm stems. Beware of the floppy ones; they’re not so fresh. The scaly tip should be “nice and closed up, slightly purple in color,” Blades said.

DETAILS

Underwood Farms sells its produce at the following farmers’ markets in Ventura County: Ventura (Wednesday and Saturday), Thousand Oaks (Thursday) and Camarillo (Saturday) and at the Underwood Ranches Produce stand in Somis, at 5696 Los Angeles Ave. The asparagus is now $2.50 a pound. Call 386-4660.

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Rodney Bosch can be reached at 653-7572, fax 653-7576 or by e-mail at rodney.bosch@latimes.com.