The abundance of seasonal fruits and vegetables is quite visible when you take a look at all that’s available across states and supermarkets. In the New York area, a lot of the seasonal produce includes apples, sweet cherries, melons, peas, eggplants, peppers, radishes, spinach, and the list goes on.
But retailers are also selling produce sourced from different other areas. Very popular now are California nectarines and peaches, and cherries grown in the North West region are on the front page of many weekly ad circulars advertising week long sale offers.
Now everyone knows that fruits and vegetables are best when in season because seasonal produce usually provides the best taste, and is cheaper.
There is, however, another industry that now grows fruits and vegetables all year regardless of growing region and season. It’s the greenhouse.
Greenhouse grows fruits and vegetables in a controlled environment and supplies food crops off-season, ensuring food security and fresh food all year long.
A little history of the greenhouse
Greenhouses were invented to protect plants from bad weather, and they have existed since Roman times. But modern greenhouses were first built by Italians, who developed temperature-regulated structures to protect the exotic plants and flowers they brought with them.
It didn’t take long before other countries took an interest and started to build these special enclosures to cultivate fruit trees. Pineapple and orange trees were among the first to be cultivated indoors.
To build and maintain a greenhouse was much more expensive at the time than it is today, so only the very rich could afford it. At one point greenhouses no longer served only a practical purpose but became a means of competition between people in the upper class who started developing more magnificent structures.
The more people developed an interest in greenhouses the more beautiful and complex they became. In time people started building them to also cultivate food and produce fruits and vegetables otherwise unavailable because of inhospitable weather conditions.
One of the largest greenhouses in America was EuroFresh Farms that produced tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumbers in great varieties.
Advantages of greenhouse produce
Depending on the company, greenhouse produce is grown pesticide-free, and because the growing environment is indoors and in quality conditions, this ensures good and safe food.
Another advantage is, of course, the year-round availability of many fruits and vegetables including tomato varieties, eggplants, seedless cucumbers, French beans, melons, sweet potatoes and much more.
Extreme weather conditions like harmful humidity and very high or very low temperatures can not only destroy a crop but also affect the quality of the crop. When cultivated outdoors, plants use energy to protect themselves against harmful weather, which sometimes leads to a plant producing lower quality fruits because of this energy loss.
In greenhouses, producers ensure a better control of weather conditions so that the plants can produce better quality food.