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Nature Fresh Farms: Gardin Insights Deliver 14x ROI and 15% Yield Increase

Summary

  • 15% Yield Increase During Winter Production: Gardin enabled Nature Fresh Farms to identify and resolve key inefficiencies in their strawberry greenhouses — optimising lighting strategies, correcting humidity deficits, and improving photosynthesis, resulting in a 12g/plant gain and 15% overall yield increase.
  • Real-Time Crop Steering Using Photosynthesis Data: By validating strong correlations between Gardin's photosynthesis metrics and plant productivity traits (e.g. fruit weight, leaf size, truss count), NFF used Gardin as a real-time proxy for yield efficiency to test and refine cultivation strategies.
  • Fast ROI and Reduced Operating Costs: Strategic changes informed by Gardin led to energy savings over 10% delivering a rapid return on investment within a single season.

"Plant sensors that can indicate how the plant responds to all climate variables are crucial for further optimisation of not only the lighting strategy but the entire greenhouse climate."

Gert-Jan Dekker, Lead Agronomist at Agrolux (Hawthorne)

Introduction

Nature Fresh Farms (NFF) operates over 2,500 acres of greenhouses across Canada, the United States and Mexico, growing the equivalent fresh produce of about 37,500 acres of traditional field farming. NFF recently invested in supplemental LED lighting in a selection of its strawberry greenhouses and partnered with Gardin to maximise the return on this capital investment. Gardin offers a sensor-driven platform that continuously monitors photosynthetic performance, the process that governs how effectively plants convert light into biomass and, ultimately, fruit. This real-time, leaf-level insight helps growers fine-tune growing conditions to optimise productivity—not just by reacting to crop stress, but by actively steering plant performance.

Gardin sensors were installed in Leamington, Canada and Ohio, USA for the 2024 Winter crop when strawberry prices are highest but require significant amounts of energy for production. Before acting on Gardin data, NFF needed proof that its measurements were biologically meaningful. Early-season data clearly showed that photosynthetic capacity (measured via Fv/Fm) strongly correlated with key plant traits—fruit weight, leaf size, truss length, and most importantly, total yield per plant.

This validation gave NFF the confidence to treat Gardin's readings as a real-time proxy for yield efficiency — the plant's ability to convert light into marketable fruit.

Case 1: Testing Far-Red Light in Supplemental LEDs

NFF began experimenting with the spectral composition of LED lighting, specifically the addition of Far-Red light — an expensive modification believed to encourage flowering and early fruit set in strawberries. However, there was limited real-world data supporting its use in greenhouse conditions.

Gardin's real-time monitoring quickly revealed that Far-Red light had a negative impact on photosynthetic efficiency and overall plant health when compared to standard Red-Blue LED treatments — and even to crops grown without any supplemental light. These insights suggested that while Far-Red might trigger some developmental changes, the net result was reduced physiological performance, possibly due to an imbalance with the solar spectrum.

This rapid diagnosis helped NFF avoid deeper investment in a costly lighting strategy that could have compromised both yield and ROI.


Case 2: Timing of LED Lighting—Morning vs. Evening

Energy costs are a key consideration in winter greenhouse production. LEDs can be run either before sunrise or after sunset, but electricity pricing tends to be lower in the early morning. Some growers, however, believed the crop responded better to evening light and pushed for higher-cost, post-sunset lighting.

Using Gardin, NFF quantified the plant's light use efficiency (LUE) at both times of day and found it was consistently 10% higher after sunset. This appeared to support the growers' intuition—until Gardin's data revealed a deeper story.

By correlating photosynthesis with environmental conditions, Gardin showed that the afternoon greenhouse temperature — naturally higher from solar heating — was the true driver of higher efficiency in the evening. In other words, it wasn't the timing, it was the temperature.

This insight enabled NFF to design a smarter lighting strategy: continue taking advantage of cheaper electricity before sunrise, but preheat the greenhouse at the end of the night to mimic late-afternoon conditions. This hybrid approach delivered the same productivity benefit at a lower operating cost.


Case 3: Diagnosing Lower Performance in Ohio

Despite using similar lighting and scheduling strategies, NFF noticed a performance gap between their Ohio and Canadian greenhouses. The crops were of the same variety and managed to hit identical flush timings, yet the Ohio strawberries underperformed significantly in both vegetative growth and fruit yield.

Gardin's sensors made the difference. When plant-level photosynthesis data was analysed in combination with local climate conditions, the root cause emerged: excessive humidity deficit in Ohio, particularly during periods when only LEDs were running. While Canada's greenhouses maintained a stable environment with lower HD and consistent temperature, Ohio's setup inadvertently created plant stress.

Gardin recommended reducing HD to below 3.4 g/kg and limiting leaf temperatures to within 3°C of ambient. The results were immediate and dramatic: within two weeks, photosynthesis increased by more than 20%, and yield increases followed in the weeks after. By April, Ohio's plant performance had caught up with Canada's - reversing weeks of underperformance.

To robustly quantify the causal impact of the intervention, Gardin used the Canadian greenhouses as a synthetic control group. After adjusting for external variables, it was possible to isolate the benefits of the Ohio climate intervention:

  • 2 grams more fruit per plant
  • 15% yield increase
  • Accelerated leaf expansion, truss count, and flowering rate

This was not just a short-term boost. Gardin's intervention helped rescue a winter crop during its most sensitive growth stage—converting a potential loss into a profitable outcome. Based on a typical greenhouse the additional revenue from recovered yield and savings on electricity would be about $50,000 per hectare, before accounting for secondary benefits such as higher fruit quality. This results in a final return on investment for using Gardin of 14x over the Winter crop season, that's a payback period of less than two weeks.

Conclusion

This case study highlights how Gardin transforms greenhouse decision-making from reactive to predictive. By measuring plant performance in real time, growers can:

  • Validate and adjust lighting strategies
  • Optimise environmental conditions
  • Quantify the biological return on capital investments

Over a single season, Gardin delivered:

  • 15% increase in yield
  • 10%+ savings in energy costs
  • 14x return on investment with payback under two weeks

More than just a monitoring tool, Gardin is a platform for smarter, faster, and biologically grounded decisions — helping growers like NFF unlock the full potential of their greenhouses, especially when it matters most.

To start your journey towards understanding your plants better, please contact us to start the sales process.