The event is Feb. 8-9 at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC), part of the Wooster campus of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES), about 60 miles south of Cleveland.
‘Exponential’ increase in Ohio hydroponics
“Ohio has been exponentially increasing its area of hydroponic greenhouses over the past two to three years,” said Chieri Kubota, professor in CFAES’s Department of Horticulture and Crop Science and a workshop organizer.
She said the event is for anyone wanting to learn how to produce food hydroponically, including growers, teachers, university faculty, and greenhouse technology manufacturers and vendors.
Participants are expected from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, among others, said Peter Ling, the workshop’s main organizer and an associate professor in CFAES’s Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering.
Ling has organized the annual greenhouse workshop since 1999.
What and why Ohio is growing
Part of Ohio’s recent growth in hydroponics is due to three major Canadian greenhouse growers — Mucci Farms, Golden Fresh Farms and NatureFresh Farms, all based in southwestern Ontario on the north shore of Lake Erie — building new facilities in the state, Kubota said.
But even before that, Ohio’s hydroponic crop production was on the rise, more than doubling from 2009 to 2014 — from about 890,000 pounds to 1.82 million pounds — according to U.S. Department of Agriculture censuses.
Ohio’s hydroponic crops include tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and strawberries.
2 days, 11 sessions, tours
During the workshop, 11 sessions will explore topics in the categories of greenhouse fundamentals, crop-specific management, integrated pest management (IPM) and technical matters.
The greenhouse fundamental sessions will feature Kubota, Ling and other CFAES experts working in various areas of controlled environment agriculture. Their topics will include lighting basics, managing humidity and controlling environments for optimum outcomes.
In the crop-specific management sessions, Kubota and Mark Kroggel, lecturer in CFAES’s Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, will focus on strawberries, lettuce and tomatoes.
Sally Miller, professor in CFAES’s Department of Plant Pathology, and Luis Canas, associate professor in CFAES’s Department of Entomology, will cover basics, practices and plant diseases in the IPM sessions.
The technical sessions will feature:
- Paul Brentlinger of Lodi-based CropKing on business plans.
- Beth Scheckelhoff of CFAES’s Ohio State University Extension outreach arm and Food Innovation Center on food safety basics for greenhouse crops.
- A grower talk by Glen and Lois Smucker of Orrville’s Glen Smucker Farms.
- Research updates by Kubota; Ling; Canas; Miller; Uttara Samarakoon, assistant professor with the Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute (Ohio State ATI), CFAES’s two-year degree-granting unit on the Wooster campus; and Jordan Clark, assistant professor in Ohio State’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering.
Click here for more information and to register.