Greenhouse Vegetable Planting and Growing Video

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See how plants are grown in a greenhouse.

Transcript

Dean: Southwestern Ontario is the largest concentration of greenhouses in North America. This area produces approximately 60 percent of the greenhouse produce that is consumed within the North American marketplace. The primary greenhouse crops that we grow are sweet bell peppers, tomatoes - tomatoes on the vine and beefsteak tomatoes, cucumbers - mini-cucumbers and long English-style seedless cucumbers.

Primarily how we start our cropping system in the beginning of the year is we will purchase seeds from various suppliers of seed. We grow many types of tomatoes, there's a pallet of different colours, shapes, sizes. The plant is growing at a rate of about 20 to 30 centimetres a week. Even from the initial time of planting, all the way through its production cycle we are touching that plant either by harvesting or training, what we call wrapping a string around the plant to hold it up.

Each fruit starts out as a flower and every week we get a new set of flowers. In every greenhouse there will be these yellow boxes. They're full of bumble bees and we use them for pollination. And so we bring these bumble bees into our greenhouses. We actually buy them -- a box of bees and they are usually in our greenhouse for about three or four months. The bumble bees will fly around and pollinate the flowers to produce fruit. And over an eight week period, we will see a new set of tomatoes. So every week we're seeing a new set of flowers and every week we're harvesting a fresh new cluster of tomatoes that will then find their way into store shelves locally and all around North America.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• AGCare
• greenhouse vegetables
• tomatoes
• cucumbers
• peppers
• Leamington
• Ontario
• Canada