Always Growing | Big Marble Farms

There’s nothing quite like the joy of eating a freshly-picked greenhouse cucumber. Plucked straight off the vine. It’s filled with a crunchy, mouth wateringly healthy goodness that you simply can’t deny, whether you’re young or old.

We wanted to share this feeling with people 365 days a year, so with more than a little effort, we built a 35 acre high tech greenhouse to do just that. We are Big Marble Farms, Alberta’s largest year-round greenhouse.

That means the ripe and delicious Mini Cucumbers, Tomatoes on the Vine, Seedless English Cucumbers, and Beefsteak Tomatoes that you enjoy in the middle of July will be just as outstanding in the middle of an Alberta Winter, because they’re Always Growing™ in ideal conditions, just down the road in Medicine Hat.

365 days of the year, we’re growing fresh, local produce.

Sunny Medicine Hat

Medicine Hat Alberta is nestled in the sweet spot of the Canadian Sunbelt—a stretch of land from Calgary to Estevan that averages well over 2000 hours of sunshine each year. Small wonder the sunniest place in all of Canada is right here in Medicine Hat.

Still, it’s not quite sunny enough to hold off the chill of an Alberta Winter. That’s why we’ve upgraded our Greenhouse to grow 365 days per year — so we can bring fresh local produce to your table — and take full advantage of all this sunshine.

Sustainability

The less you have to travel to get what you want the better. Especially when it comes to fresh vegetables. That’s the idea behind everything we do at Big Marble Farms. Our local produce spends more time ripening on healthy vines and less time sitting on trucks. So you’ll always find the freshest Big Marble produce at your local grocery store.

Greenhouse

Standing at a gargantuan 3.1 million square feet (72 acres), Big Marble is the largest Greenhouse in Alberta. It’s home to over 496,000 cucumber plants; 385,400 tomato plants and 47,000 grow lights that add to the warm, sunny glow of our farm. Even in winter.

We also use 680 km of radiant hydronic heating pipes and a 7 million litre heat recovery system for ultra-efficient operation in winter months and a mechanized louver system to cool off plants during warm spring and hot summer days. This ensures that our produce is grown from the healthiest and most vibrant plants you’ll find anywhere.

Always Growing Inline Blocks

Packing Facility

When you put this much effort into growing and harvesting such perfect cucumbers and tomatoes, you don’t want anything to go wrong with packing or shipping. At Big Marble, we’ve got it covered with our state-of-the-art Pack Shed. Nothing gets bruised, mislabeled, or left standing for too long. As soon as it comes off the vine, it’s heading your way.
Highwire

There are a variety of ways to grow greenhouse fruits and vegetables, but the absolute best way is High Wire. Just like it sounds, the plants are suspended 5 to 7 feet in the air and they’re fed the perfect amount of nutrients and water.

Being high above ground means that everything we grow at Big Marble gets the maximum amount of sunshine and is less at risk for infestation, fungus and disease.
Pest Management

Integrated Pest Management is a fancy way to say we do everything in our power to avoid using pesticides. The fact that we’re in a greenhouse is a great start. We also use good bugs like bees for pollination and ladybugs to control the population (aka: eat all) of the less friendly ones.
Water Management

Field grown tomatoes require 60 litres of water to produce one kilogram of tomatoes. Our greenhouses do the same with less than 15 litres of water. Leveraging advancing technology, combined with our water collection and recycling methods, we aim for water consumption of less that five litres per kilogram.