OriginO started to grow certified organic greenhouse vegetables after many years of conventional cultivation. In 2005 they switched to organic farming, as they realized that there was a need for consistently high quality organic tomatoes peppers and cucumbers in the North American market. Nowadays they strictly grow organic produce, which is being marketed to the greater Vancouver area and the West Coast of the United States for Oppy.
"Coming from conventional cultivation, growing organic you had to go back and start from the basic", explained Keith Hammonds, vice president of operations at OriginO.
"There are no guidelines, you learn as you go. We ran into many challenges that come with organic cultivation. For example growing directly in a higher soil volume and using natural fertlizers; we had to rethink our entire irrigation and nutrition strategies. In conventional growing we were able to push the crop by manipulating irrigation EC and climate , in organic soil cultivation we feed the soil, not the plants, this allows us to steer the crop into balance and allow natural nutrient uptake.
But there were more challenges for OriginO to overcome, and for one of those, they came up with a not so conventional solution: a high pressure fog system. Such a system is mostly installed in hot and warmer southern climates.
Hammonds explained that not cooling, but humidification was the reason they installed it in their cucumber crop 3 years ago, it has been so successful in there operations that they have included in their peppers crops as well.
"During days with high light and high outside temperatures, we use the fog in order to release the stress of the plant. Rather than being on the edge of growing all the time, we found that the fog could help us make things a bit easier on the plant. This gives us constant fruit quality throughout the growing season.
Normally when a crop tends to get too much stress from high light and temperature, we would close the thermal screens, which generates more shade. Now, when we start to see the smallest amounts of stress, we put the fog on and don't have to take away all of the light. We see that this method puts less stress on the crop and keeps it more vital."
"While B.C. is not that known for extreme temperatures, fogging systems for cooling (only) are not standard over here, especially not in conventional crops. However, an organic crop is something different, you need to keep the crop as strong and vital as possible, as the resources to control pests and diseases are very limited.
There is nothing really out there other than biological controls for pest control, and we have found that these work more efficiently in the fogged crops. Compared to our production without the fogging installation, we had fifty percent less pest problems in our fogged crops. The plants were much stronger to cope with red spiders and aphids."
The pumpsets for the high pressure fog system
For more information:
OrginO Organics
www.origino.ca
For more information: MicroCool
Mark Stanley
+1-760-834-3345
mark.stanley@microcool.com
www.microcool.com