Within a week or two, Leo Hunnakko will have dozens of ripened tomatoes ready for the picking. He’s also been harvesting lettuce, spinach, green onions and radishes since Christmas.
With the Thunder Bay area having a traditional growing season from March to September, Hunnakko has been growing vegetables in his cold climate, solar thermal prototype greenhouse all winter long.
Built as a feasibility study last year, the 18-by-22-foot greenhouse – named GH365 – not only survived its first Northwestern Ontario winter, but also seems to have thrived.
"I realize we’ve had a little bit milder winter than normal, but it’s virtually exceeded my expectations," Hunnakko said. "I wasn’t sure how it would perform. It’s one thing to have information on paper and have an academic understanding of it but it’s a very different thing to actually put it to work and it behaved very well."
With some nights in December and January dipping to temperatures as chilly as –34 Celsius, the GH365 saw few causalities and Hunnakko said they tweaked a few features here and there.
Originally equipped with two four-by-eight-foot solar panes, thermal blinds and a heat-retention wall allowing the greenhouse to run using minimal electrical consumption, a data logging system was added and Hunnakko has designed a second-generation greenhouse based on the same fundamentals but with a few improvements.
"I think it will perform even better next winter and I’m actually hoping in a way it will be a cold winter to really give it a good, sharp test," he said.
Hunnakko was inspired to build the greenhouse after hearing that the region sees on average about 340 hours of sunlight during the winter months.
"I wondered why we weren’t taking advantage of that solar energy that’s there for the taking," he said, adding quite often the coldest days are the sunniest and the GH365 really takes advantage of those factors.
He’s also received interest in the project from Nishnawbe Aski Nation, who Hunnakko said have expressed serious interest in building a greenhouse in at least one of their communities. Lakehead University has also looking into the possibility of building one of the solar thermal greenhouses.
Hunnakko sells his produce from the greenhouse to Jacob’s Café in Nolalu and is also hoping to get a country market up and running next month in the town.
