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Photo courtesy of Lufa Farms

Lufa Farms opens new rooftop greenhouse in Montreal

Building on a new garden trend, a greenhouse atop a Montreal warehouse growing eggplants and tomatoes to meet demand for locally sourced foods has set a record as the largest in the world.

It’s not an obvious choice of location to cultivate organic vegetables — in the heart of Canada’s second-largest city — but Lufa Farms on Wednesday inaugurated a facility that spans 160,000 square feet (15,000 square meters), or about the size of three football fields.

>> Read the full story here

Photo courtesy of Vertical Harvest

Vertical Harvest to open new farm in Maine

According to story from News Center Maine, vertical farming company Vertical Harvest is expanding to Westbrook, Maine, with a 70,000-square-foot vertical farm.

“We want to grow as much food as possible. We want to employ as many people as possible. We want to do both year-round. That’s what gave us the idea to go up. So at its heart, we want to be able for these farms to serve the community in which it sits, so that means being in the heart of our urban centers,” said co-founder Nona Yehia, in the article.

>> Read the full story here

AmericanHort, HRI announce new recommended terms for disease resistance claims

AmericanHort and its research foundation, the Horticultural Research Institute (HRI), has started an “industry-initiated movement” to begin a market-wide standardization for terms appearing on plant material being released to the market. The tags will reference specific diseases and/or abiotic stresses.

The goal is ultimately to help customers understand different traits and characteristics — drought, cold exposure, etc. — so that customers have more reasonable expectations for performance once they purchase plants. Another term they hope to clarify is resistance, as customers often treat resistance and tolerance as the same. The reason they are recommending these changes now, is due to an expected influx of new plant material into the market over the next few years.

>> Read the full story here.

October 2020
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