TECHNOLOGY
is as vital as the next to delivering high-quality on what is a highlyperishable line of products .
He says : “ Our supermarket customers and the consumers demand a product on the shelves 365 days a year , regardless of what ’ s happening outside – so the more we can do to control the variables of growing , the better job we can do in supplying and ensuring there is a good , fresh product on the shelf .
“ There are various ways that we control our process to allow us to do that . Firstly , we make our own organic nutrients and we do that in a sustainable way . What we do is capture rainwater off the roof surfaces of our facilities and then we use it to irrigate all of our greenhouses and controlled LED rooms .
“ Then we use a sustainable method to naturally make organic nitrogen . It ’ s a proprietary recipe that we have and it makes our LED grow rooms unique in that we have a sustainable source of organic nutrients that we then pump through the rooms to the plants .
“ We irrigate the plants so that they uptake what they need and then drain back in a closed loop system and recycle that rainwater and nutrients , so it ’ s extremely efficient in terms of water conservation and water usage , and compared to outdoor farming it ’ s a dramatically lower water requirement that we need to make things grow .”
Heydon would not elaborate on how the nitrogen production happens , saying that it is ‘ probably the biggest trade secret ’ the company keeps , although he did hint that it was basically nature ’ s own nitrogen cycle happening within the company ’ s own system . But that ’ s not the only area where Shenandoah is using science to its own advantage .
Heydon continues : “ We have a proprietary soil recipe that we use . There is organic biological activity in our soil so that the plants are gaining nutrients from the soil and that ’ s a combination of the organic fertilizer and the soil that we ’ re able to grow in .
“ The next piece in the jigsaw is the climate . Through a lot of that research and development , and innovation , we ’ ve worked out the formula climate-wise for all of our crops , so we ’ re able to keep the LED grow rooms at the constant and perfect climate that the plants need and that helps to make them strong . That is also a contributing factor to
20 September 2017