St. David's Hydroponics grows them for shipment across North America
By Lynn Ogryzlo, Just a Taste
Columns: May 30, 2008 

They harvest about 75 kilos of giant, perfect peppers each week. St. David's Hydroponics is a whopping 17 1/2 acres of agricultural activity under glass -- and it's hot. As I walked through the thousands of eight-foot tall pepper plants, workers were harvesting red peppers. Huge trailers full and overflowing with glistening, beautiful peppers were being wheeled into the packaging area to be sorted by size and packaged by weight. Boxes were piled high, waiting for shipment to grocery stores that would offer these tasty peppers within 24 hours of being picked. Now that's fresh!  

grow peppers in my own backyard and what I found at St. David's Hydroponics was an amazingly huge operation that was more science than I'd known to be possible.

Harvest ends in November. Plants are removed and new seedlings are planted. Within four to five weeks the pepper plants are two feet tall and after eight weeks or so, the first peppers come off the plants. From November to February, no peppers are harvested.

The plants are pruned back so the peppers grow large and hardy. As I watched huge trailers of peppers move by me I noticed how clean and beautiful they look. They use no sprays, they're fed organic material and everything about growing and running the greenhouse is perfectly natural. It's an efficient operation, producing healthy, delicious and safe food.

Pickers were busy cutting ripe peppers from the tall plants, packers were busy sorting and boxing them while a transport truck backs into the loading dock. Even though peppers have a shelf life of two weeks, these peppers will be on the shelves of high-end grocers across North America the next day or two (depending on the distance). This is contrary to the shriveled, soft peppers we often see in some local stores that come from the other side of the world. By the time we buy them, they've begun to expire.

So why can't we get St. David's peppers here? Current transportation systems support the distribution of imported produce, but that's changing. The folks at St. David's Hydroponics are beginning to look at supplying the local market, so keep your eye out and ask for them.

St. David's produces red, yellow and orange peppers as well as some specialty eggplant and most recently, mini cucumbers. Ian Mole, director of the operation, tells me his favourite is the orange pepper because it's sweeter.

I love peppers fried and sandwiched between two thick slices of crusty bread; others like to stuff and roast them. Every year, my family spends countless hours charring them on the barbecue. The sweetness and smokiness of the silky, grilled peppers are worth every ounce of effort that goes into their creation. Every time a package is drawn from the freezer, thawed and made into a special dish, the anticipation is enough to draw plenty of company.

St. David's Hydroponics is an amazing feat of agriculture and it's the largest LFP (Local Food Plus) certified grower in Canada, which means they meet all sorts of strict environmental and high agricultural standards.

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