Tomato Grower Credits New Grow Lights For Better Yields
Norway’s Nedre Hanasand nursery has increased their quality tomato yield by 30% year-round and improved the farm’s environmental profile thanks to Philips GreenPower LED toplighting.
Though Hanasand has upped their light usage by 50%, it still generates considerable energy savings on their cultivation, according to a news release from Philips.
Nedre Hanasand nursery is located in Rennesøy, 30 km north of Stavanger, and grows tomatoes year-round. The Hanasand family has run the farm for many generations and the current owner, Stig Jakob Hanasand, is a third-generation tomato grower. Hanasand farm has four hectares, with tomatoes distributed in six different greenhouses. The greenhouse where the new lighting is installed houses 30 different varieties of tomatoes, from red and brown to black, yellow and striped.
Hanasand has a goal for upgrading the lighting in its greenhouse, built in 2001. “The original reason for choosing Signify was because they had this solution with linear grow lights. The building we were going to install the lighting in does not have the same ceiling height as the other greenhouses, but we are still dependent on good uniformity of the light,” Stig Jakob Hanasand said in the release.
“Initially, we switched from HPS (high-pressure sodium) lighting to LED, and we have been testing the new LED lighting for almost a year now. We needed help from Signify for light calculations in order to get a really good amount of light and decent enough uniformity when using our lights. We did all the installation of the lighting and programming of when to switch them on by ourselves. We had sensors and control equipment from before. We also have weather stations that measure light, temperature, wind, and rain. We want to use daylight as much as possible. At a given amount of light radiation from the sun, the lights switch off automatically. Tomatoes should never have more than 18 hours of light, and it is important to know the amount of light in relation to how much we will water the plants.”
“We are also testing this light on seedlings, which looks really promising, as we are seeing good results so far. The linear toplighting from Signify has a lot of uniformity and the light works extremely well,” Hanasand said.
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