“Our season is good so far,” said Robert Lowe, who used to be a hydroponic greenhouse grower in Canada. “The season was a little late this year and there was a lot of rain, hence there was a little shortage of light in the beginning of the season, but the yields are okay.”
Grower Robert Lowe ( sitting on the right side) and colleagues from El Rosal visiting Shan Halamba and Edgar Leyton from Riococo and Leyton Greenhouse supply at the Expo AgroAlimentaria. Lowe grows on Riococo bags and he said a change to coir slabs from rockwool has gone well for him. “I used to grow on rockwool, but El Rosal decided to change to coco. It's just a question of different watering strategies with each substrate."
Lowe's greenhouse is located about an hour from Irapuato, and he grows beefsteak tomatoes, peppers and grape tomatoes on 17 hectares. 9.5 hectares of the greenhouse is used for the beefsteak tomatoes, 5.5 ha for the peppers and 2.5 hectares are used for the grape tomatoes. The harvest is marketed to the United States by JemD Famrs' Red Sun vegetable brand.
As Agricola has many hectares of greenhouses, they also need many young plants during the season. This was for them the reason to start their own in-house propagation branch. Nowadays, their propagation branch PlantFort is a well know young plant propagator in Mexico, that is also supplying other Mexican growers with starting materials. For more information:
Agricola El Rosal
www.agricolaelrosal.com.mx
[email protected]
Plantfort
www.plantfort.com.mx
[email protected]
Riococo
www.riococo.com
[email protected]