Prairie fruit and vegetables have a major advantage over produce from
Ontario, British Columbia and California – hardly any pesticide.
“In Saskatchewan, we spray two or three times a season,” said
University of Saskatchewan plant science professor Bob Bors.
“In the Okanagan or Ontario, they spray 10 to 15 times.”
On a July 24 tour of the university’s horticultural test plots, Bors
said another Saskatchewan advantage is its summer sun. Even though the
prairie growing season is days shorter than Eastern Canada, the hours
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of sunshine make it possible to grow some fruit that Quebec has
difficulties raising.
However, the Prairies have trouble, too.
“It’s not the Ð40 C that kills fruit trees, it’s the wind with it.”
Bors said country orchards are even more at the mercy of the wind than
city gardens, so farmers should protect their young fruit bushes and
trees with shelterbelts, more water, and plastic sleeves to prevent
rabbits from gnawing the bark.
Doug Waterer, another U of S plant scientist, said saskatoons are the
single largest fruit crop on the Prairies, but people are now looking
for “that next winner.”
Added Bors: “With saskatoons, you harvest in July, then you have
nothing to do. You want customers to keep coming back to your place.”
He has a couple of ideas of what might do that. He is experimenting
with a dwarf sour cherry that produces nickel- to quarter-sized
processing fruit on a bush much like saskatoons. The university has
already released one variety called Carmine Jewel, and more are planned.
Blue honeysuckle is another possibility, and Bors is searching for
stock from Russia.
He is also experimenting with strawberries by crossing wild and alpine
varieties with tame ones to improve the flavour. Experiments with pears
have produced a tasty fruit but low yields, and plums that are prolific
but taste boring. Apricots and apples have been disappointing in terms
of commercial orchards because of taste and softness.
Vegetables might be an alternative to fruit for prairie growers,
Waterer said. To deal with the shorter growing season, he has tried
different plastic covers and mulches that would give tomatoes, peppers
and melons a head start over imported produce. What is working in his
test plot is a tall tunnel of plastic laid over a frame of aluminum
hoops. The heat buildup and wind protection, along with drip
irrigation, allow the crop to be available earlier, with double or
triple the yields of field-grown vegetables. Peppers are ready at the
end of July and melons in the third week of August.
The plastic mini greenhouse kits sell for $1,000 and take Waterer half
a day to set up. He said the kit can pay for itself in the first year
if the grower sells directly to the public, or in the second year if
the farmer sells to grocery stores.
Waterer is also testing 80 other varieties of vegetables for prairie
conditions.
Other plots are growing herbs such as
coriander, cumin and dill to develop agronomic knowledge for farmers.
He said Saskatchewan has 40,000 acres in spices. Most are exported
because of quality and absence of pesticides and disease.
“The consumer is thrilled to get it.”
