Hosting the Grodan Seminar

Yesterday the Chisholm Glasshouse Training centre hosted a seminar run by industry leaders Grodan and AIS Greenworks, which focused on the propagation techniques associated with Tomatoes. 

The seminar featured industry identity Hans van Herk, who is a crop technical advisor with Grodan, who gave a highly informative address to a variety of industry members that included representatives from Boomaroo, Chisholm Institute, Duralite, Flavorite, Gippsland Glasshouse Growers, Grodan, Moriatis, Protected Cropping Australia, Trandos Hydroponic Growers, and Withcott Seedlings.

Hans van Herk

Within his presentation Hans covered a variety of topics that included the technical aspects of propagation plug and block options, seed sowing and germination improvement techniques, and plant grafting, and general growing techniques that can be utilised for precision growing.

Also on hand to provide advice was Grodan's Andy Lee, who is currently over from the United Kingdom. Andy was able to complement Hans presentation, a fact which made the session even more beneficial for the participants.

Further grower seminars are planned for 2012, and we will keep you posted when these are happening.

Research tour visits the Chisholm Glasshouse

This week we hosted a visit from the Department of Primary Industries, facilitated by Ross Clarke Manager, Market Development North Asia & Russia, Farm Services Victoria.

This saw Dr Akira Tanaka, who is from the Kaiteki Institute of Japan, visit us. The  Kaiteki Institute is a global research institute focused on meeting 21st century challenges in energy, the environment, and healthcare, and was established by Mitshubishi Chemicals. 

During his visit, Dr Tanaka spent some time being shown how the Chisholm glasshouse irrigation system both recycles and sterilizes its irrigation water, and also utilises a supply of Reverse Osmosis (R.O.) water from the adjacent Water Centre, which treats Class A water from the Carrum Sewage Treatment plant via our own R.O. machine, and then utilises this water for irrigation in the glasshouse. 

Dr Tanaka was also given a guided tour of the Priva Climate control and labour tracking systems that the Chisholm Glasshouse utilises on a daily basis.

Pictured above from left to right:-

Wayne Beasy - Chisholm Business Development Consultant, 

Dr Akira Tanaka - Kaiteki Institute,  

Tony Bundock – Chisholm Senior Trainer – Precision Growing,

Ross Clarke - Manager, Market Development North Asia & Russia, DPI

Traineeship Opportunity

Chisholm Institute is offering a one year traineeship opportunity for an individual to undertake both practical and theoretical experience in the glasshouse. All the details are listed below:-

2012 - Lots of opportunities........

Firstly, a Happy New Year to everyone, and hopefully you all had a good Christmas as well.

This year we will be updating the blog on a far more regular basis to keep you across the developments at Chisholm as they occur. We have a range of courses and training opportunities planned for 2012 that will give both the local and wider industry some great training opportunities.

Like any other production facility, work has been continuing with our crops on a 24/7 basis. This has seen staff member Tony Bundock, being on call and working in the glasshouse right across the Christmas and New Year period, while our students and staff members take their annual leave. As you will see, he even had a visitor on Xmas Day!

Ho, Ho Ho!!!!

Our crops are going well, with both Tomato and Capsicum crops continuing to deliver product. We have also had a few uninvited guests in the shape of Red Spider Mite in the Tomatoes and Aphids in the Capsicums. This has resulted in us having to spray as our Integrated Pest management Programmes (I.P.M.)  were over run by these little pests. Hopefully we can now restore the balance and get the I.P.M. programmes back on track. 

In the next few weeks we will be promoting the training programmes for 2012, as well as some exciting developments............so keep following these posts!

Growing again

Regular visitors to this site may well have wondered what we are doing in the glasshouse after all of the work to clear the previous crop.

Work certainly did proceed and we replanted the glasshouse in the 2nd week of July with Capsicums, Tomatoes, and trial row of Aubergines. Our plants all came from Trandos Hydroponic Growers in W.A. and are now becoming well established in their new home.

Capsicums and Aubergines

Our varieties for this growing season are all Rijk Zwaan varieties, and we will be integrating the production side of our activities with the "Love my Salad" project that the Chisholm hospitality students are involved in. Further details are available at http://www.lovemysalad.com/

Our Tomato crop is also establishing well, and we are trying to keep a more generative level of growing within the crop.

Tomato Endeavour

The down time in the glasshouse also allowed us to complete the installation of the high definition camera system in the Tomato house for the e Glasshouse project. This now allows us to gain a remote view of the glasshouse, as well as being able to rotate the camera 360 degrees. 

Our window on the world!

The camera itself can also be programmed to take a picture at a specific time and in a specific place, so this will be a great advantage in our crop registration process.

General image from the camera

Zoom in on an individual plant from the camera

 



Continuing to clean up..................

This week has seen us making a start on clearing out our Tomato and Capsicum crops in preparation for the 2011 / 2012 crop. However, although our glasshouse is small by some standards, we have still had to move a large amount of green waste and groslabs. This equates to around 45 cubic metres of green waste and 450 Groslabs.

All of this material has to be moved from the glasshouse and deposited in bins and on pallets. This then allows us to move on to the next stage of cleaning which will see us washing down the interior of the glasshouse, flushing and cleaning all the irrigation systems, and the 1001 other maintenance tasks that we have to perform. And if you think we are putting in some hard work, spare a thought for those commercial growers who are doing the same thing across several hectares of production area.

 Our Tomato house, cleared and ready for a major spring clean

Our Capsicum house - looking like it has suffered a Locust plague!

Once the glasshouse is 'sterile' again we will be ready to plant our new crops. In order to maintain our bio security standards, there will be strict control on who enters the glasshouse to maintain a high level of control on the general hygiene standards.

 Groslabs awaiting processing for recycling in the composting trial

Out with the old, in with the new..................

Although our first crops weren't planted until mid October, we are now preparing to pull these out in preparation for replanting in July. The crops were always going to be something of a trial - and try us they did! - but we are now looking to replant in July to fit in with a more traditional industry based planting time. This will also mean that the crops will more closely align with the student timetables in terms of the structured full time training courses that we offer. So what are we replanting with? We will be replanting Compartment 2 with Truss and Cocktail Tomatoes, and Compartment 1 with Capsicums and a small trial of Aubergines. Our plants are currently being propagated by specialist growers Trandos, and we are using seed from our industry partner Rijk Zwaan. In the next few weeks we will be updating the blog with details of all the varieties that we will be using. Our green waste will be taken to a green waste facility, whilst our Groslabs are going to be used as  trial in conjunction with Grodan which will be looking at the composting of the growing medium. This project is also being driven by one of our Outbound Mobility project students, and details can be found on the link on the right of this site.

How are we going so far?

The past few months have seen both the staff members and the students at Chisholm Institute having a fairly steep learning curve in all aspects of the glasshouse management.

Our ability to not only grow crops to a reasonable standard as well as managing the climatic conditions that give optimum growth have greatly improved in the past 7 months. Whilst our first crop was always going to be something of a trial, we have ended up with some quite reasonable results.

Our initial crop was late in being planted (mid October) but we have decided to take this crop out at the end of this month with the aim to being fully replanted by the first week of July. This not only allows us to align ourselves with a more traditional crop production timetable, but also gives us a better alignment with the student timetable.

Whilst the crops are important to the facility, the driving force is the need for industry training. The teaching area is now well set up with student workstations that each have Priva Office on each computer, and a central Starboard that can not only show real time data from the Priva Integro, but will soon be able to be linked to a web cam that is being installed as part of our eGlasshouse project.


We are also planning to bring one of Privas leading climate advisers to Australia in August. Hein Jasperse will be hosting some specialised seminars on climate control and we will update you all on when this event will be taking place.

Endeavour Outbound Mobility Project commences

Last week saw us hold our information night for Chisholm Horticulture students who want to be considered for the Endeavour Outbound Mobility Project. This is a scholarship scheme where the lucky recipients will be able to travel to the Netherlands at the end of July to spend two weeks looking at technology in both controlled environment horticulture and water treatment and use.


Although there are only 6 places available, the competition is high with 40 prospective candidates attending the session. 


To secure a position, each applicant will have to firstly submit a formal application outlining their experience and qualities, along with a fund raising plan to raise $1000 towards the project. 


The applicants also have to identify an industry partnership project that they will work on before they depart, as well as sourcing information to assist the project overseas, before returning to Australia to implement the project with their industry partner.


"The links with industry for the partnership project is providing both the students and industry with a great opportunity to further their business skills and develop methodologies to develop production and efficiency"' said Horticulture Manager, Peter Curson.


We are looking forward to reviewing the applications in the immediate future," said Peter.


Applications for the students close on the 15th of April, and shortlisted applicants will be interviewed immediately after this date to allow for the identification of the 6 scholarship winners within the week.


The students will be looking at a number of industry sites as well as undertaking formal training with both training providers PTC+ and Priva.

Priva's Head office and training centre

As part of their program the students will also be keeping a daily Blog of their activities so it will be possible to track their experiences as the project proceeds.

Irrigating with rainwater - it's not all about free water

With the wettest summer on record has come the benefit of plenty of free water. Chisholm's glasshouse roof provides the perfect mechanism for harvesting rain water which is piped in to our storage tanks. With a storage capacity of some 200,000 litres of water, we were certainly surprised to have seen our tanks at full capacity a couple of times this summer!

But although the water is plentiful at the moment, it has some inherent problems. The pH value of the rainwater is around 6.2, but we have found that once we add our A and B solutions of fertiliser, the pH changes to a value of 4.2. This is not good for plant growth and can cause root damage.

The reason for this is that the rainwater has no 'buffering' capacity. In basic terms it is too soft. To counter this we are now injecting Potassium Bicarbonate in to the irrigation water through the Powerplants Nutrimix Fertigation system.

Powerplants Nutrimix Fertigator

The Nutrimix links directly in to our Priva Integro system which is now allowing us to have a finite amount of control on the irrigation water content. This now means that after treatment our water is being supplied to the plants at a more acceptable pH value of 5.6

But just supplying water is only half the story. We are also monitoring our gro slab moisture content, pH and EC rates, as well as recycling the irrigation water and sterilising it as well. But more on that side of our system in a future blog entry!