Press Media

Sandy Shore Farms in Port Burwell, Ontario, is testing one-person harvesters, popular in Europe, to cut its labor-intensive asparagus crop.
“We’ve always cut on five-man machines, yet you can only go as fast as the slowest person, making the whole process inefficient,” said partner Marc Wall.

Sandy Shore Farms, based in Houghton Centre, is new to the Port Rowan market this year. Joti Bhangle said it was a treat for the farm, which usually trucks its produce to the St. Jacobs market, to set up shop much closer to home.

“Nothing tastes like fresh Ontario asparagus,” says Ken Wall, a grower in Norfolk County, Ont., home to the largest concentration of asparagus farmers in Canada. “It’s exciting to grow the first vegetable out of the gate in the spring.”

Diseases such as purple spot (figure 1) can have major economic impacts for asparagus growers, and the best line of defence is spraying (see figure 2). The good news is that asparagus growers know this and take steps to protect against it. The bad news is that there are few things harder to spray than asparagus in fern.