US (PA): Growing strawberries with container hydroponics while ignoring the seasons

Though strawberries are available in supermarkets year-round, the local season is fleeting. Peak season begins in Pennsylvania in late May and lasts a little over a month. Strawberries shipped from California, Florida or Mexico in the offseason might be huge, glossy and red, but are often more impressive to look at than to eat.

At GetBlok Farms in West Aliquippa, however, strawberries are ripening against the calendar. They're grown not in a field awaiting the June sun, but inside a highly controlled shipping container where light, humidity, temperature and water chemistry are calibrated with precision.

For the company known for growing greens and herbs at its farms, the new crop is both a technical challenge and a market opportunity. Because the environment is entirely controlled, GetBlok can produce a fruit usually associated with a narrow season in winter and early spring, when local strawberries are otherwise out of reach.

Even now, during the meteorological vicissitudes of March, GetBlok's strawberries are being sold directly to consumers online at www.getblok.farm. For GetBlok's husband-and-wife cofounders, Vinnie and Christina Lima, that possibility came only after months of trial and error, and they are still experimenting. "We dabbled with strawberries before in a container where the couple grows leafy greens," said Vinnie Lima. But the fruit needed more specialized conditions than the greens did.

Read more at Post Gazette