Automation is a great solution for growing lettuce and herbs, and it saves on labor. But how do you automate ponds that are full of water with floating trays? And how do you then keep the water quality in order? Or: how to grow multiple types of crops at multiple densities on an automatic mobile gutter system (MGS) KG has found something to that.
Over the past five years, they have done a development where it is possible to grow lettuce, herbs, and baby crops on a mobile growing table system, without having to leave water sloshing over it or interfering with the electronics. Matthias Haakman of KG tells us more about this interesting concept.
Space for the roots
“At the bottoms of the growing tables, we made a support for the trays. This way, the tray does not lie directly on the bottom, but there is space in between. If you then put water in and it drains away, the moisture still remains underneath, without the roots drying out. Because there is space in between, the roots do get room to absorb oxygen. The design of the trays and bottoms is so well-matched that we see a big increase in production per square meter as a result.”
Automating from propagation to harvest
As already mentioned in the introduction, the new system also contributes to better automation. “Filling and seeding a seed tray can already be done fully automatically now. We can automatically place that seed tray in the next line in a table to send to a germination cell and then to a propagation cell or to the greenhouse.”
After 1-2 weeks, the table is taken back out of the greenhouse or cell to the workspace for transplants. “This can be done by hand, but also automatically. Then we transplant it from the sowing tray to the propagation tray. Then it goes back into the greenhouse – depending on the crop, the table can be taken back to the workroom after some time. Then we can harvest and clean it completely automatically, ready for the next round.”
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