Production

Automated monitoring
Automated crop monitoring provides numerous benefits to greenhouse operators, Dr. David Ehret, of the Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre in Agassiz, B.C., told growers attending the annual Saskatchewan Green Trades Conference.

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The star pollinators
Bumblebees (Bombus impatiens Cresson) (Figure 1) have become increasingly common in Canadian vegetable greenhouses as most growers rely on them to provide supplemental pollination. Tomatoes and sweet peppers are self-pollinating, but supplemental pollination results in larger, more attractive fruit. When a bumblebee colony is placed in the greenhouse, female worker bees begin to collect pollen to feed to the developing larvae. More worker bees then emerge, resulting in further pollen collection. Therefore, successful pollination is partially dependent on the bees’ ability to produce large numbers of workers to forage.

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Growing in the Green: Hard to contain ourselves
In the November 2009 issue, we shared a few highlights of the Sawaya Garden Trials. This month, I am sharing with you the cultivars that had excellent garden performance and that attracted considerable attention and interest from our visitors.

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Carbon-neutral production
A year after delivering its first shipment of carbon-neutral peppers, SunSelect Produce Inc. of Abbotsford, British Columbia, believes the system can deliver both economic and environmental benefits.

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Greenhouse grower notes: Low temperatures and pests
It seems reasonable to think that shutting down the greenhouse for a few weeks during the cold months to clean up should be sufficient to freeze and eradicate pest populations.

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Special Series in the rootzone #1: Water uptake
In the first of six articles for Greenhouse Canada, Grodan® crop consultant Andrew Lee provides an insight into the physiological process of water uptake by plants and describes how the rootzone and aerial environment interact to drive this within the greenhouse.

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Growing in the Green: Your recipe for success
We grow poinsettias once a year and, from one crop to the next, there is enough time for our memory to fail us on what we want to change and the improvements we want to apply to the next crop.

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Flushing out new composting ideas
In a previous “Inside View,” we looked at numerous options for making growing containers from renewable inputs. But what about the main item that fills those pots, namely the growing medium? Our staple for many years, peat, is a wonderful natural ingredient that has served (and continues to serve) the industry very well. It is estimated that 60 per cent of the world’s wetlands are peat bogs, and only seven per cent have been accessed for agriculture/forestry uses. A much higher proportion is simply burned as fuel.

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