Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Canada Banana Farms, located 200 kilometres west of Toronto in Blyth, Ont., is cultivating fruit such as papayas, pineapples, lemons, guavas, and – of course – bananas. You'd think that you'd need an advanced degree in horticulture or botany to grow fruits like these in frigid Canada, but Terry Brake's method is easy – and cheap.
[...] "We grow them in hoop houses," Brake told CTV News Channel on Friday. "And we heat it with wood all winter long." The hoop houses – essentially long sheets of polyethylene stretched over a frame – have effectively created the jungle-like conditions these fruits need to flourish. "It just feels like you're in the tropics," Brake says of his DIY greenhouses. "It's very humid in there: about 85 to 90 per cent humidity in the winter."
Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/meet-the-farmer-who-s-growing-bananas-in-ontario-1.3007500
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday July 30 2016, @06:39PM
This is in Canada, so he is probably already doubly insulating them. My question would be more about "How do you filter out smoke?" and "What kind of wood do you use?" Some wood grows really rapidly, think greasewood, though that's not Canadian. And the ashes can be decent fertilizer (soil texturizer + minerals), but you need to add something acidic to adjust the pH.
FWIW, keeping a greenhouse warm is not going to be cheap, but it makes getting contaminated with the fungus that's killing off bananas unlikely, and readily isolatable, so he can probably save a fortune on fungicides.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @09:32PM
Perhaps the smoke is sent up a chimney.