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Talk about your unintended consequences.
To stretch the growing season of its tomatoes, Suntech Greenhouses Ltd. has installed red, blue and bright light emitting diode (LED) lights to warm up the cold grey light of winter at its four-acre indoor farm, located just south of the intersection of River Road and Roger Stevens Drive.
Bob Mitchell, the owner of the indoor farm, said the 13-month-old experiment has been a real learning experience. He’s learned that LED lights affect different tomatoes differently. His grape tomatoes love the LED lights, which give off an intense violet glow that can be seen for kilometres at night. But the light is killing off his beefsteaks.
The answers don’t exist yet. We have to find them on our own.
“When you switch to artificial light, you take what you know about standard nutrient content and just throw that out the window,” said Mitchell, adding that he is now customizing the mix of fertilizer that he feeds his tomatoes based on extensive testing of the plants. “The answers don’t exist yet. We have to find them on our own.”
Grape tomatoes are backlit by the LEDs at SunTech Greenhouses.
The problem is, this wasn’t supposed to be a science experiment. He purchased the LED system, which uses more than a million tiny bulbs to cover 1.4 acres of tomato plants, for a little over $1.1 million in 2014. He had spent three years researching the lighting system before buying it and had numerous assurances from the system’s manufacturer that they would help him with his growing season.
As it turned out, the research that supported the manufacturer’s claims was based on studies conducted on greenhouses in Japan, which has similar daily light conditions as Los Angeles. Ottawa’s daylight is totally different.
“This is all new. We’re finding things that we want to share with the industry. But we need to get into production and away from research,” said Mitchell. “Our intent wasn’t to be a research facility.”
Mitchell founded Suntech in 1998 with a 1.5-acre greenhouse and has expanded the operation into one of the best known tomato brands in Ottawa.
Husband and wife team, Carmen Perez and Bob Mitchell run Suntech Greenhouses in Manotick. Recently they started using LEDsto help grow their famous tomatoes, which have turned the sky bright purple at night, creating a bit of an attraction in the area.
The falling value of the Canadian dollar has pushed up the prices for imported fruits and vegetables. As Suntech operates in Canadian dollars, the costs have changed little, giving Mitchell a competitive advantage. But the lights are messing up his deliverables.
“We’ve got all these restaurants calling. There is all kinds of new business coming in,” he said. “We’ve got to get this figured out.”
He’s been taking soil and leaf samples from plants and sending them for analysis to determine which nutrients the plants are lacking or using up too quickly. He’s also been monitoring the water coming back from the hydroponic plants. He’s played with the LED lights, changed their colours, the times they turn on and the length of time they are lit.
His struggle has attracted the attention of researchers who see the challenges facing Suntech as an opportunity to study the impact that different types of light have on plants. One of the researchers involved in the project, Prof. Michael Dixon from the University of Guelph, believes the knowledge gained by solving Suntech’s issues could have big impacts on hydroponic farming around the world and possibly even help grow plants on missions to the moon and even Mars.
“This essentially represents a commercial-scale field trial of some of the research activities we’ve been undertaking in the space program,” said Dixon. “In my research we are looking at what is the spectral recipe? What is the colour recipe for specific plants? It turns out that all plants can be different, they can adapt, and their responses in terms of their physiology, their size, shape, colour and taste can all be modified by the quality of the light. So, you have to be careful.”
Dixon is working on something called the Martian Garden Project, which aims to make it possible for explorers to grow food on other planets. He said working with Suntech may help unlock how plants use light to make food.
“It’s critical. We are doing it for space exploration and life-support applications,” he said. “The answers have to be solid before we take it to Mars.”
Dixon has been working with LED lighting specialist Intravision Light Systems to create customized lighting for numerous greenhouses, including those growing medicinal cannabis and a Montreal-area producer of the herb basil. He says Intravision is preparing to install additional lighting for the Manotick greenhouse with new hues that should help Mitchell finally see the gains he has been hoping for.
In the meantime, the greenhouse has become an attraction because of its nightly light show. According to Mitchell’s wife Carmen Perez, who is the co-owner of Suntech and handles much of the day-to-day administration, residents nearby have been complimentary about the purple rays that light up the sky over Manotick.
“It’s become quite the attraction,” she said. “I’ve had emails from people who say they love to wake up and see it.”
Suntech is using new lights to help grow tomatoes and the LEDs are turning the sky purple at night.
查看原文...
To stretch the growing season of its tomatoes, Suntech Greenhouses Ltd. has installed red, blue and bright light emitting diode (LED) lights to warm up the cold grey light of winter at its four-acre indoor farm, located just south of the intersection of River Road and Roger Stevens Drive.
Bob Mitchell, the owner of the indoor farm, said the 13-month-old experiment has been a real learning experience. He’s learned that LED lights affect different tomatoes differently. His grape tomatoes love the LED lights, which give off an intense violet glow that can be seen for kilometres at night. But the light is killing off his beefsteaks.
The answers don’t exist yet. We have to find them on our own.
“When you switch to artificial light, you take what you know about standard nutrient content and just throw that out the window,” said Mitchell, adding that he is now customizing the mix of fertilizer that he feeds his tomatoes based on extensive testing of the plants. “The answers don’t exist yet. We have to find them on our own.”
Grape tomatoes are backlit by the LEDs at SunTech Greenhouses.
The problem is, this wasn’t supposed to be a science experiment. He purchased the LED system, which uses more than a million tiny bulbs to cover 1.4 acres of tomato plants, for a little over $1.1 million in 2014. He had spent three years researching the lighting system before buying it and had numerous assurances from the system’s manufacturer that they would help him with his growing season.
As it turned out, the research that supported the manufacturer’s claims was based on studies conducted on greenhouses in Japan, which has similar daily light conditions as Los Angeles. Ottawa’s daylight is totally different.
“This is all new. We’re finding things that we want to share with the industry. But we need to get into production and away from research,” said Mitchell. “Our intent wasn’t to be a research facility.”
Mitchell founded Suntech in 1998 with a 1.5-acre greenhouse and has expanded the operation into one of the best known tomato brands in Ottawa.
Husband and wife team, Carmen Perez and Bob Mitchell run Suntech Greenhouses in Manotick. Recently they started using LEDsto help grow their famous tomatoes, which have turned the sky bright purple at night, creating a bit of an attraction in the area.
The falling value of the Canadian dollar has pushed up the prices for imported fruits and vegetables. As Suntech operates in Canadian dollars, the costs have changed little, giving Mitchell a competitive advantage. But the lights are messing up his deliverables.
“We’ve got all these restaurants calling. There is all kinds of new business coming in,” he said. “We’ve got to get this figured out.”
He’s been taking soil and leaf samples from plants and sending them for analysis to determine which nutrients the plants are lacking or using up too quickly. He’s also been monitoring the water coming back from the hydroponic plants. He’s played with the LED lights, changed their colours, the times they turn on and the length of time they are lit.
His struggle has attracted the attention of researchers who see the challenges facing Suntech as an opportunity to study the impact that different types of light have on plants. One of the researchers involved in the project, Prof. Michael Dixon from the University of Guelph, believes the knowledge gained by solving Suntech’s issues could have big impacts on hydroponic farming around the world and possibly even help grow plants on missions to the moon and even Mars.
“This essentially represents a commercial-scale field trial of some of the research activities we’ve been undertaking in the space program,” said Dixon. “In my research we are looking at what is the spectral recipe? What is the colour recipe for specific plants? It turns out that all plants can be different, they can adapt, and their responses in terms of their physiology, their size, shape, colour and taste can all be modified by the quality of the light. So, you have to be careful.”
Dixon is working on something called the Martian Garden Project, which aims to make it possible for explorers to grow food on other planets. He said working with Suntech may help unlock how plants use light to make food.
“It’s critical. We are doing it for space exploration and life-support applications,” he said. “The answers have to be solid before we take it to Mars.”
Dixon has been working with LED lighting specialist Intravision Light Systems to create customized lighting for numerous greenhouses, including those growing medicinal cannabis and a Montreal-area producer of the herb basil. He says Intravision is preparing to install additional lighting for the Manotick greenhouse with new hues that should help Mitchell finally see the gains he has been hoping for.
In the meantime, the greenhouse has become an attraction because of its nightly light show. According to Mitchell’s wife Carmen Perez, who is the co-owner of Suntech and handles much of the day-to-day administration, residents nearby have been complimentary about the purple rays that light up the sky over Manotick.
“It’s become quite the attraction,” she said. “I’ve had emails from people who say they love to wake up and see it.”
Suntech is using new lights to help grow tomatoes and the LEDs are turning the sky purple at night.
查看原文...
