The owner of Northstar Organics is grafting eggplant seedlings to hearty tomato root stocks in hopes of helping the eggplants resist soil-borne diseases and producing a better and slightly quicker yield.
And there’s no difference in the taste of the eggplants, as the root system is only the delivery mechanism for water and nutrients. Northstar Organics supplies restaurants and eateries around the capital region like Cafe Brio and Nourish and retail outlets like the Market Garden in Vic West and Lifestyles Markets.
He earned a biochemistry degree instead and worked in labs across Canada, but the call of the land was strong. Dirksen had a small farm and greenhouse on Lasqueti Island for a time, then leased a one-acre plot at Halliburton Farm in Saanich, where a property bought by Saanich was transformed into a training ground for farmers and a community organic farm.
He acquired the land from Eric Schultz, an agricultural engineer who had planted the blueberries and created drainage“The cornerstone of organic growing is crop rotation,” said Dirksen. “We’re giving years in between the various crops. We don’t want to plant the kale in the same place year after year because it can cause disease and nutrient problems.
“The lack of wind and temperature control and the density of the harvest mean we can harvest much more per square metre from here than we ever would from any field crop,” he said. “Everything else can be really difficult.” As for heat waves, Lukacs said the farm has installed shade cloths over the greenhouse and a misting system that cools the air and adds humidity.
“I think because of that, we’ve been able to increase the gross sales from the farm every single year.”At 55, Dirksen represents the average age of farmers in Canada in 2021 —56, according to Statistics Canada. The idea is to give prospective young farmers an immersive experience in every aspect of running a farm, so one day they might operate their own or manage one for someone else.
“If I were to pay a general labourer to pick rocks all day, they wouldn’t be learning anything. But as an apprentice, there’s a variety of things to learn — everything from accounting and farm tax status to planting, harvesting and marketing the products and seed collections,” she said.
پاکستان تازہ ترین خبریں, پاکستان عنوانات
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