We as Montana Lisianthus are in a transition in growing more and more biological. It is a new way of thinking. For Montana the quality is the number one, and second is trying to grow the Lisianthus as close to nature as we can. Step by step. This is a very nice adventure. And what we see as a result is: we are creating stronger, more resilient flowers.
In our daily way of growing it means taking good care of our soil, when we have harvested one area we bring green product back to our soil; (bring back what we took in organic material) We also re-use the soil of another grower. After that we bring a lot of biological stuf in the soil like fungi/microbes/bacteria too bring more life into the soil. We do not use any fungicides anymore!
We are trying to create a biological balance in our greenhouse.
Energy
In the subject of Energy there is a beautiful new chapter starting;
In the backyard of our greenhouse there is a complete new project going on. It is called Geothermy. It means we have drilled a pipe 2 km deep in the ground, so we can pump water from 85 degrees up tot he surface. We can use the warmth to heat the greenhouses. We cool it down to 35 degrees and bring it back to the same depth.
This is one project, but we do have 8 of this projects in our Glass Area in Westland, we are going to connect all those projects together and make a whole new warmth network. This is a very environmental friendly way of heating our Greenhouses. We are already transforming our grow-light system into a LED system, which is better for the environment.
And also we already are working with a networks of pipes with ‘waste CO2’ of the industriel-area of Rotterdam, they bring this waste Carbon Dioxide into our greenhouses. We give this to our plants as an fertilizer by air. And you know about the Photosynthesis proces of flowers and trees: plants use this CO2 and transform it into kilograms and oxigene (O2) !!!