What’s Growing On event focuses on greenhouse food production

Next month’s What’s Growing On event hosted by Vineland Research and Innovation Centre will highlight the commercial greenhouse industry. ~  Farmphotos.ca photo

By Luke Edwards

After spending the past few years touring the orchards and vineyards, visitors to next month’s What’s Growing On event will get a chance to learn how food is produced indoors.

Registration is open for Vineland Research and Innovation Centre’s annual What’s Growing On open house, which welcomes the public onto the campus to learn about a specific aspect of the centre’s work. This year the focus is on greenhouse fruit and vegetable production, a timely topic as people become more interested in food sovereignty.

“It’s going to be strictly focused on how we grow more food more reliably, and how greenhouses can be a conduit to that and de-risk Canada’s food supply,” said Nicole De Long, director of business and client development.

There’s more than 4,500 acres of greenhouse vegetable production in Ontario, representing a farmgate value of more than $2 billion, according to stats from the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers. More than 725 million kilograms of produce is created in Ontario greenhouses each year.

Visitors to the event will be taken through multiple stops. The first focuses on how the greenhouse system works, covering highwire crops and how they’re grown, how certain conditions affect performances, yield consistency and variety development.

A second stop looks at technology, and how it’s incorporated into greenhouse production.

From there, visitors will learn about integrated pest management, and how greenhouse operators use biologicals to manage pest and disease.

Finally, visitors will be taken out to the tree culture research project to learn about a new project being supported by a Greenbelt Foundation grant that looks at how used stone wool from greenhouses can be repurposed and used as a soil amendment.

All told, De Long said it should be a great event for anyone curious about food production.

“I think that it’s pretty interesting how they go about doing it in the high wire system and how productive it can be when you do it at large scale. The amount of fruit and veg that comes out of that system is quite interesting and amazing,” she said.

The open house runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 10 at the Vineland campus, 4890 Victoria Ave. North. Details and registration is available online, at vinelandresearch.com/whats-growing-on-2026.