Just released this morning, Pure Flavor announced its acquisition of Cervini Farms' C5 location in Leamington, Ontario, Canada, to add to its expanding operation of greenhouses and distribution centers. This acquisition comes on the heels of adding industry veteran Joe Sbrocci to the leadership team as Senior Vice President, Business Development & Strategy, and the addition of DeTemporada Farms, a 25-acre bell pepper greenhouse in Merlin, Ontario.

“The addition of the Cervini Farms' C5 location was an opportunity to strengthen our strategic footprint,” said President Jamie Moracci in the announcement. “Increasing our own acreage helps facilitate our growth alongside our grower partners and supports our need of scaling up our operations to drive efficiencies.”

The location is adjacent to Pure Flavor’s farm in Leamington, which the company says creates a 350-acre flagship Pure Flavor campus. Don’t be surprised, too, if you continue to hear more expansion news in the future.

“These are exciting times for our company and our employees,” Jamie said in the announcement. “We will continue to evaluate strategic opportunities to scale up in a mindful way to fuel our growth.”

Our friends at Modine Manufacturing reached out to provide us with some helpful pitfalls to watch for and strategies to prevent issues with your heating system as you head into warmer weather. Often these problems can crop up after the system has sat unused for the summer, but with some preventative work you can avoid issues next winter when you need your heat the most.

Here’s just one example of what you can find in the story: “For safety reasons, it’s important to inspect the heat exchanger to ensure there are no cracks or rusting and to make sure it is still intact. Growers or licensed professionals will also want to check the vent pipe for any rusting or blockages.”

Head over to Inside Grower to read the full story.

You may remember reading Dave Kuack’s article about Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) in the November issue of Inside Grower (if you didn’t, check it out now!). We’ve got even more resources for you now on the topic.

Tech On Demand enews editor Bill Calkins wrote about VPD in the January issue of GrowerTalks in a story called “Learning Curves & Data Curves.” But he didn’t stop there. For Tech on Demand, he completed a three-part podcast and video series on the topic, too. You can find the three parts below, or you can find the Tech on Demand pod wherever you get your podcasts:

Part 1 Podcast or Part 1 Video

Part 2 Podcast or Part 2 Video

Part 3 Podcast or Part 3 Video

Thanks to Bill and Dr. Will Healy for these great resources!

High tunnels are a great way to grow in a protected environment while also growing in the ground. However, growers can also have crops in containers in high tunnels and achieve similar, if not better, results. This is effective if the soil is not conducive to the crop, or the grower wishes to maintain more control over the media or crop density.

A recent e-Gro Edible Alert newsletter written by researcher Ryan Dickson at the University of Arkansas updated information published in 2020 about long-cane production strategies related to growing raspberries and blackberries in high tunnels, either resulting in first-year harvesting or second-year. The techniques are becoming slightly more prevalent in the U.S. after originating in Northern Europe and spreading to other countries.

You can find all the details in that issue of the e-Gro newsletter. Once you’re there, check out the rest of the resources available on the site, including more of the Edible Alerts.

Along with those blackberries and raspberries, I’m seeing more interest in indoor strawberry production, so Signify’s three tips for growing strawberries without daylight came across my desk at just the right time. The company has been running trials for several years now at its Philips GrowWise Research Center in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. 

I’ll share Tip 1 with you here, as written on the Signify blog, and then you can click through to see the rest:

Tip 1: Good planting material allows for year-round yields

The most important ingredient to a successful indoor strawberry crop is the planting material. A growing strategy based on June-bearing genetics does have its advantages, but is only possible if good-quality planting material is available all year round.

We therefore chose to work with everbearing varieties where plant balance becomes much more of an issue. In our last round of experiments, we proved that harvests can be maintained for a full year! Establishing a sufficiently lush leaf canopy allows to maximally intercept light and can be achieved through vegetative triggers. After establishing that volume, new generations of leaves will much easier stretch to sufficient length.

Find Tips 2 and 3 HERE.

There’s been a lot of discussion about what can take CEA production to the next level, and in all those discussions, targeted breeding to produce better yield and more disease resistance always comes up. That’s why I chose to focus my February Inside Grower cover story on the challenges and opportunities for breeding in CEA. The issue is out now, so visit the Inside Grower website to read that story and peruse the rest of the issue.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, too, abou CEA breeding or any of the other topics we covered this month. Email me at jpolanz@ballpublishing.com.

Also, a quick reminder: Please take our 5-minute survey! I’m asking about your operation’s expansion plans, any new crops you’re interested in and what you’d like to see in future issues of Inside Grower, as just a few examples. The survey is anonymous and the data will be aggregated.

You can find the survey here.

Thanks to those who have already taken it—your time is greatly appreciated!