Under The Lights: $15M Makeover Means Greenhouse Strawberries In Time For Valentine's Day
Under The Lights: $15M Makeover Means Greenhouse Strawberries In Time For Valentine's Day
SHARON HILL, WINDSOR STAR
February 5, 2018
Strawberry plants replaced cucumbers in a Leamington greenhouse this summer when DelFrescoPure made a $15-million switch to grow and sell fresh strawberries through the winter.
It costs 30 to 40 per cent more to grow strawberries because of the extra expenses such as added lighting that tricks the everbearing strawberry plants to grow like it’s a long summer day.
“We took a big chance putting these lights in,” Carl Mastronardi, president and one of the owners of the Kingsville-based Del Fresco Produce, said Monday. “It’s working.”
The immediate payoff could be Valentine’s Day sales but in the long run for the greenhouse industry and for consumers, the move a couple of Leamington and Kingsville growers have made to greenhouse berries could be a game-changer.
“This could be a lot bigger than we think,” Mastronardi said of having fresh, local berries that are grown using less chemicals because of the beneficial insects greenhouses use to kill pests.
“This opens up a realm of trying a whole bunch of new things.”
Next on the list are raspberries, he said.
The strawberries are marketed as YES!Berries Your Every Day Snack! and are sold for $3.99 to $5.99 for a 12-ounce container. They can be found in local grocery stores including Metro, Sobeys, Walmart and Remark Farms.
“It’s a taste of summer all year round,” said marketing manager Fiona McLean. “Once you start you can’t stop.”
YES!Berries are picked almost 100 per cent ripe, are sweet and consistent, and can be in grocery stores sometimes as fast as the next morning, Mastronardi said. Florida and California berries are not picked ripe and take days for them to reach Ontario stores.
Strawberries are packaged at the Del Fresco Produce Ltd. strawberry greenhouse, Monday, February 5, 2018. DAX MELMER / WINDSOR STAR
Other local greenhouses have tried strawberries. Orangeline Farms in Leamington won a 2016 Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence for its strawberries.
In October, Mucci Farms in Kingsville announced it was spending $12 million in addition to its $24-million greenhouses built just for strawberries to become the largest strawberry grower in North America under glass. It will have 36 acres.
Mastronardi doesn’t have the most indoor strawberry acres here but figures, for now, his 10 acres are likely the most under grow lights.
The electricity costs would have been too expensive so the greenhouse uses two natural gas generators to produce electricity and then heat, as a byproduct, which is distributed to the greenhouses through pipes as hot water, Mastronardi said.
Lights are used at the Del Fresco Produce Ltd. strawberry greenhouse, Monday, February 5, 2018.DAX MELMER / WINDSOR STAR
DelFrescoPure grows about 100 acres of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beans and eggplant in its greenhouses. Strawberries could be harvested year-round but the season will run from late October to July because Mastronardi expects his berries grown with beneficial insects to kill pests can compete with field-grown berries.
He expects to have the most greenhouse strawberries available in local grocery stores this Valentine’s Day. Each acre has 43,000 strawberry plants with berries ripening daily.
There will be opportunities to try YES!Berries this weekend in some Sobeys stores in Ontario including the Amherstburg store and then the demos will be in some Metro stores in Windsor, London, and Sarnia Feb. 15 to 18.