Owners of British Columbia greenhouses are inviting their neighbours and customers to tour four Lower Mainland greenhouses on May 23 and to see for themselves how so much can be produced from so little, and for so long.

To visit a B.C. greenhouse is to look through a figurative, and rarely uncovered, window and see modern science’s solutions to the time-and-space restraints on food production that have challenged humankind since the first nomad planted the first grain seeds 12,000 years ago.

In B.C., greenhouse production of flowers and vegetables accounts for 21 per cent of total agriculture production. Remarkably, that production occurs on only 1/100 of one per cent of all the province’s agricultural land.

In B.C., too, greenhouse production puts fresh local vegetables on the kitchen table 10 months of the year.

The occasion the annual BC Veggie Day promotion organized and sponsored by the BC Greenhouse Growers’ Association, owners of greenhouses in Abbotsford, Aldergrove and Surrey are opening their facilities to the public on May 23.

The greenhouses and their locations are: Calais Farms, 34079 Clayburn Road, Abbotsford; TAVES Family Farms Peppertree Farms, 270 Gladwin Road, Abbotsford; Topgro Farms, 1110 – 264th Street, Aldergrove, and Sunnyside Greenhouses, 1119 – 176th Street, Surrey.

Their open house hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

BC Veggie Day is supported by the B.C. government’s Buy Local Program; delivered by the Investment Agriculture Foundation of B.C. with funding from the provincial agriculture ministry.

The growers’ association website is bcgreenhouse.ca

The association’s Veggie Day website bcgreenhousegrown.com