Lighting the way to year-round greenhouse veggie harvest

 Ontario’s greenhouse vegetable growers are experimenting with new lighting systems in hopes of being able to harvest locally grown vegetables year round.

There isn’t enough natural sunlight in southern Ontario during the fall and winter months to take a greenhouse pepper crop through to harvest.

This led the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers (OGVG) to access funding through the Ontario Farm Innovation Program (OFIP) for research to evaluate the effectiveness of supplemental light from overhead High Pressure Sodium (HPS) light bulbs and LED bulbs at plant level.Peter Quiring - webAnd so far, the results have been encouraging, with plants responding well to supplemental light levels of 200 micromoles (number of particles of light) per square meter. Their current yield is already equal to that of a crop grown during the normal growing season, and is expected to increase over time.

“The supplemental light enables the plant to grow, thrive and set fruit year round. Without it, plants won’t grow as well and won’t produce as much fruit due to the short daylight hours in fall and winter. This opens new possibilities,” explains Peter Quiring, Owner and President of NatureFresh™ Farms in Leamington, where the light trials are taking place.