DC Farms performs weekly data collection of all growing variables within the crop. Leaf length, growth per week, flower size - just to name a few - are collected on a weekly basis to help monitor growing trends. This allows the team to read and steer the crop in the best direction possible.

Through intensive monitoring of the crop’s health during growth, DC Farms can anticipate and prepare for pest problems that can arise in the greenhouse. One of the low-tech monitoring tools used by DC Farms are the flags hanging in the crop. These coloured flags help the team track any abnormalities within the greenhouse crop. By marking areas where pest population is high, or where diseases are threatening the crop, the crop protection team can monitor these areas over time and verify the results of their pest management attempts. If their initial attempts are unsuccessful, they’ll be able to watch and take other actions to protect the crop.

A common IPM monitoring technique is the sticky, yellow (or blue) insect tape that can be seen hanging above the crop. This sticky tape is important to the monitoring program as it captures insects within the greenhouse for both control and identification. The tape is hung throughout the greenhouse, so the grower can estimate pest populations, This allows for the team to know when the pest population is too high and other measures need to be implemented. Using more preventative methods for pests such as beneficial biologicals allows for a more natural way to rid pests. A common beneficial used by DC Farms is A. swirskii. this is a predatory mite that controls thrips and whitefly, which are two very common greenhouse pests.

A crop needs to be pollinated to ensure proper growth and fruit development. This is another area where DC Farms uses insects to simplify and speed up the process. Bumblebees in the greenhouse travel from flower to flower and spread pollen to ensure high crop yield and healthy growth. Hives are placed throughout the greenhouse so bumble-bees can work nearby without wandering too far from their hive. Overall, bumblebees help reduce labour costs at DC Farms, as without bumblebees pollinating the crop, workers would be required to hand pollinate row by row; a very expensive and labour intensive process. While eggplant is a self-pollinating plant, the use of bee's aids with the pollination process.

One of the most important crop monitoring/crop control technologies in place on DC Farms is the Priva Greenhouse Controls System which allows for precise tailoring of many greenhouse inputs. The Priva system provides ongoing monitoring and adjustments of important crop inputs. For example, the team can monitor and adjust CO2 levels in the greenhouse to ensure that the plants are receiving exactly the amount of CO2 required for optimal growth. The team can also adjust the amount of light and water that the crop is receiving – along with the composition of nutrients within this fertigation water. The Priva Greenhouse Controls System allows growers and their crop management team to passively monitor many variables within the greenhouse (climate, air composition, energy use, etc.). Because of these capabilities, this information is readily available for the crop management team to interpret; without needing to gather the data or constantly be measuring important variables. This system data can be accessed remotely, the team can check in on the status of the crop from anywhere with an internet connection via Priva’s mobile application. The Priva Greenhouse Controls System lets growers schedule repeating tasks, so activities like watering the crop or adding CO2 to the greenhouse can be done automatically. This leaves growers less tied to the greenhouse overall, as the grow can be monitored remotely, and major tasks can be scheduled to occur as planned without the need of human input.

Water irrigation is of vital importance to all greenhouse operations. DC Farms is able to make very detailed changes to their nutrient feed to make sure the plant receives exactly what it needs, when it needs it. All the irrigation water is recycled by capturing the water in large holding tanks after being fed to the crop, and passing this solution through a water pasteurization unit which disinfects and cleans out 99% of harmful bacteria and viruses. This helps reduce DC Farm’s environmental impact by ensuring that this nutrient-containing water isn’t making its way into local water bodies.

Additionally, any water that can not be recycled, such as the boiler blow down water is pumped into an Evaporation Tank. The water is brought to a continuous boil until all the water has been evaporated.

Here at DC Farms, we grow our Mini Eggplant hydroponically in inert media – Rockwool.

When vegetables are grown in regular soil, they’re being grown in a living material. Due to the life in the growing media, it opens up the chance for different soil-borne diseases and pests to arise. It takes meticulous management to overcome these pest or bacteria problems, so most growers try and preemptively manage this possibility by growing in an inert media. When vegetables are grown in an inert media like rockwool or coco coir, it provides a pathogen-free growing environment.

When growing with a drip irrigation hydroponic system, there’s the ability to target the amount of nutrients and water that the plants are getting and deliver it directly to the root zone of the plant. There are many other benefits to growing hydroponically, with a few being: increased growth rate of the crops, increased yield, and less water required overall as they’re able to capture and re-circulate water more than once. Due to these benefits, a lot of Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers choose to grow hydroponically.

At DC Farms we take this a step further. We are always monitoring our feed and drain (leachate), as well as the Water Content (WC) of the slab to ensure that we are not using more water than needed. We are able to remotely monitor our slab water content, as well as manually test specific slabs using Grodan's GroSens MultiSensor System.

Food safety is another primary focus at DC Farms. We are compliant to the Canada GAP auditing program, demonstrating commitment to growing safe produce. Food Safety is important to our family and the families we feed, therefore we do everything we can to ensure our facility is up to the highest food safety standards. This is achieved through strict cleaning procedures  and team effort and commitment towards our Food Safety Program. We pride ourselves in maintaining a clean greenhouse and packhouse. All debris is kept clean throughout the facility to assist in crop health and to eliminate any probable contaminants.

DC Farms  has recently installed a new, state-of-the-art automated packing line for their greenhouse roma tomatoes. Benefits that comes with this automated packing line include: employee safety, increased packing efficiency, and state of the art label printer and application.

Increase in productivity that resulted after this automated packing line was installed is mainly due to the inclusion of 3 tiers of conveyor belts as opposed to the 1 tier system we used in the past. This machine can keep boxes of unpacked produce coming constantly to the packer's station and allows the employees to prepare the proper weight of mini eggplant effortlessly.

There is less intensive labour involved for all of the employees on the packing line, as the packing line is now automated to assist the packers. The top tier/conveyor belt transports empty boxes to an employee to use for palatizing the final product. This means that employees can now focus on doing a final visual inspection of the packed product, rather than spending time collecting the empty boxes from each packer's station.

Overall, the new technology DC Farms installed on the packing line saves on operating costs and allows us to operate at a faster rate than before the technology.