Day in a Life of a Grower: Growing

Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to grow food year-round using hydroponics?

Step inside a working farm and explore what it’s like to be a hydroponic grower! Fiona with Rocket Greens will document what it’s like to seed, transplant, grow, and harvest in a Growcer modular farm*. Plus, how Rocket Greens distributes their harvest through their subscription box which you can understand by following Fiona on a distribution day.

---

Growing

The growing process takes six weeks in all, from tiny seed to full, fluffy, leafy-green plant.

Two weeks in the seedling area, and four weeks in the grow room, the main part of our Growcer container farm.

Jenna, our sustainability technician, is the true champion of seeing our lovely little greens through their lifespan. Jenna looks after our plants from seed all the way to ready-to-harvest plant, and it’s no small feat.

While our Growcer container makes SO many things easy (like automatic lighting, temperature control and ventilation), growing still requires lots of work. Our system contains pumps, hoses, and 1,800 growing plants - plus another 1,200 seedlings - to be looked after every single day.

Jenna knows the farm like no one else because she spends the most time there. When I was the sustainability technician, this was my role, too. Jenna and I are the only two people who work in the Growcer farm: I operate and oversee the Rocket Greens program, and Jenna is responsible for day-to-day duties including plant care, dosing nutrients, doing maintenance, and making sure our greens are thriving.

“Spending hours in a container filled with plants you’ve grown from seed doesn’t always feel like work.”

Spending hours in a container filled with plants you’ve grown from seed doesn't always feel like work. With the aromas of herbs and fresh veggies and all those shades of green, being in our farm can be therapeutic. Anyone who has grown, harvested or hunted their own food knows how satisfying it is to be part of this process - it’s one of my favourite parts of the job.

Fiona surrounded by plants in the Growcer farm, where some days it “doesn’t even feel like work.”

Each morning we check on our Growcer to make sure everything is going well. We look at the pumps to ensure water is being moved well, check hoses for clogs, and look for any signs of potential plant issues so we can get ahead of it.

Certain varieties tell us right away when something is wrong. Cilantro is our canary-in-the-coal mine when it comes to iron deficiency: its leaves will become discolored and mottled yellow-green before any other varieties have shown signs of deficiency, and we’ve encountered this problem before. A simple addition of iron chelate fixes the issue easily!

Chelated iron is measured, mixed into a solution, and then added into the plant’s water source.

We always keep a close eye on signs of wilting or poor flow - delicate plants like lettuce usually wilt first. This is a sign we need to clean the small, black hoses that distribute water to each tray, or adjust the green valve that controls water flow.