Starting A Vegetable Garden

The first step in creating a vegetable garden is to select a suitable site. This should be a sunny spot that can be easily tended, watered and protected from cold weather.

It also helps to know which vegetables are adapted to your area. Knowing this will help you to avoid common pest and disease problems in your garden.

The No. 1 Central Document published by the Communist Party of China clearly stated that modern facility agriculture should be developed. From last year’s “speeding up the development of facility agriculture” to this year’s “developing modern facility agriculture and implementing the modernization and promotion of facility agriculture,” facility agriculture has been placed in a higher position. As a benchmark for facility agriculture, the Netherlands has the world’s leading facility agriculture technology reserve and management experience and maintains close cooperation with China. On February 22, the Sino-Dutch “From Field to Table” online and offline seminar was grandly held in Shanghai Garden Hotel. As the first offline event after the pandemic, it attracted many people to participate, and everyone exchanged ideas on how to better provide high-quality and safe fruit and vegetable.

Wouter Verhey, Agricultural Counselor of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in China, and Mr. Ye Junping, Deputy Director of Shanghai Agriculture and Rural Affairs Commission and Deputy Director of Shanghai Rural Revitalization Bureau, delivered a speech and congratulated the successful holding of the seminar. In his speech, Mr. Verhey said that the purpose of this seminar is to create business opportunities for Chinese and Dutch enterprises in the industrial chain of facility agriculture, strengthen cooperation among governments, enterprises, and educational institutions, and jointly develop and build modern, large-scale, sustainable, profitable green farming project.

At the seminar, representatives of 8 companies from Kubo Greenhouse, Bayer Vegetable Seeds, Grodan, Foodventure, Knight, Dingdong Maicai, Shanghai Xinghui Vegetables, and Wanguo Club gave keynote speeches, sharing and exchanging ideas on how facility gardening works to promote the development of smart agriculture. China has a vast territory and diverse climate types, but how does it maximize the use of local resources to develop efficient modern agriculture? Greenhouse builder KUBO gave an answer on the spot. Its Ultra-Clima® semi-hermetic greenhouse solution has landed in many countries. Even in Shandong, where the climatic conditions are more challenging in central China, a high-tech tomato semi-enclosed greenhouse was built for Haoyu Group. Knight provides its environmental control system for the greenhouse, which is equivalent to the brain of the greenhouse. In the Zhonghuan Yida Demonstration Park in Kunshan, Jiangsu, you can see many products of Knight, including automatic tomato-picking robots, which are about to land.

The vegetable factory model strengthened
As representatives of local enterprises, Shanghai Xinghui Vegetables, Dingdong Maicai, and Wanguohui all shared their experiences. It shows that China’s fruit and vegetable market demand is changing from quantity to quality, and the demand for high quality and safety is increasing. The factory model of planting vegetables has been strengthened. The Shanghai area has a strong demand for green leafy vegetables, and the facilities and equipment, technology introduction, and new varieties related to vegetable cultivation have great market potential.

The retail end began to lay out the planting industry
Mr. Zhu Yongli, the founder of Wanguolian, also shared the requirements of the retail side for the planting side. Interestingly, more and more supermarket chain retailers have begun to deploy planting. Branding is an important part of solving product sales, and consumer psychology is worth exploring.

Enhance the functionality of fruits and vegetables
Dingdong Maicai shared the changing trend of fruits and vegetables from the perspective of e-commerce. Consumer demand is changing from simply eating well to hoping that fruits and vegetables have more nutritional value, and the functionality of fruit and vegetable is further enhanced.

From left to right: Mr. Simon Lin from Haftech Agriculture, Mr. Just from Food Venture, Mr. Wang Xingyin from Dingdong Maicai, Mr. Zhou Weijian from Shuifa Group, Mr. Zhu Yongli from Wanguohui-Wanguolian, and Ms. Youjiao from Kubo Greenhouse

In the group discussion session, there were extensive questions and answers and discussions on topics such as food safety, technological innovation, energy saving and emission reduction, and marketing strategies.

The symposium was hosted by the Netherlands Facility Agriculture Alliance and received strong support from the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Shanghai and the Shanghai Municipal Agriculture and Rural Committee. The Netherlands Facility Agriculture Alliance is formed by a group of private companies and research and education institutions from the Dutch horticultural supply chain. It is supported by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (under the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs) and is co-led by the Dutch Embassy in China and the Dutch Greenhouse Delta. In the future, Shanghai will strengthen cooperation with the Netherlands Facility Agriculture Alliance to further promote the development of facility horticulture through continuous technological innovation and upgrading of technical equipment.

Source: hortidaily.com