SEPTEMBER 2021
CELEBRATING 142 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
THEGROWER.ORG
RAW INGREDIENTS
Fresh or processed, vegetables are under pressure
This truck load of freshly cut celery is destined for a food processing plant near Centre Hall, Pennsylvania. Holland Marsh grower Tim Horlings says that the eight-hour haul from Newmarket Ontario to the U.S. is the last stage of six months of tender care from seedling to soup. Photos by Glenn Lowson.
KAREN DAVIDSON The lure of U.S. processing contracts is about more than the exchange rate – although, admittedly, it’s tipped in favour of Canadian exporters this year. For celery grower Tim Horlings, it’s about minimizing the time that he owns the crop. “I don’t have to store it,” says Horlings, as he watches a tractor trailer rumble out of his Newmarket, Ontario farm drive. The load will be delivered in under eight hours to Hanover Foods Corporation. Situated in Pennsylvania – about 700 miles south as the eagle flies – Hanover Foods Corporation is the largest fully-integrated and independent food processor in the United States. The maw of a plant transforms raw vegetables into canned, frozen, refrigerated and freezedried foods.
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‘Supporting local farmers since 1924’ may be the tag line for Hanover Foods Corporation, but some of its daily bread depends on Canadian celery. As Horlings explains, American farmers don’t stack up the same celery yields as those growers in Ontario’s Holland Marsh. “We produce a higher tonnage on smaller acreages,” says Horlings, whose father and uncle started the trek to Pennsylvania back in the early 1990s. Blessed by muck soils and access to irrigation water, the family has specialized in processing celery that forms the flavour base of soups, stews and chowders. Since taking over the farm in 2006, Horlings starts every March by planting Norseco’s Sabrosa variety of celery in his greenhouses. By May, the seedlings are big enough to be transplanted. One might think that the agronomics of a processing variety would be less demanding than celery for the retail trade. Not so. To achieve volume yields, the crop must receive a weekly dose
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of micronutrients. Boron and calcium, in particular, are needed to form strong cellular walls to support the sixpound heads at 100 days of maturity. These are twice the size of celery bound for grocery stores. “We take tissue samples every week so that we can adjust micronutrient needs and adapt to the weather,” says Horlings. Protective fungicides are equally important to assure quality appearance of the celery. By August, diseases such as bacterial leaf spot, celery leaf curl and blackheart may “take down” plants. Why so fussy if the celery is going to be chopped and diced into Chicken Pot Pie soup? The processor’s specifications require unblemished straight stalks of celery.
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