Adi and Jennifer met and married when they were students in graduate degree programs at the University of Saskatchewan in the department of Plant Sciences: Adi graduated with a Master’s degree and Jennifer earned her PhD. Since completing their degrees, Adi and Jennifer have turned their shared passion for horticulture into a thriving business called @KaleidoscopeVegetableGardens.
When Adi proposed the idea of market gardening, Jennifer was hesitant at first. Her grandparents were market gardeners in her native France, so she understood the challenges and toil involved in food production. Nonetheless, she and Adi started a small urban garden produce business in 2011 with just a tiny home greenhouse, their home garden and other “borrowed” backyard gardens in Saskatoon. A few months in, Jennifer was hooked.
The business thrived and they soon realized that they needed to scale up as demand increased for their specialty vegetable crops such as spinach, Hakurei turnips, radishes, beets, conehead cabbages, specialty peppers such as Padron and shishito, tomatoes, various types of eggplants, winter squash, and zucchini.
They wanted to use high tunnels (essentially unheated greenhouses) to extend the growing season and grow their business. In order to do this, they needed land. According to Adi: “Finding the right property was a challenge because we needed a really good water supply for high tunnel production.” They finally found and purchased a former cattle farm with a reliable water supply near Dundurn in 2013. Today they have six unheated high tunnels which amounts to 10,000 square feet of growing space, farm a ½ acre of field crops and have a 1,000 square foot greenhouse for starting plants.
High tunnels and row covers, which Adi refers to as “low-tech methods”, have proven to be a big advantage in a cold, windy, prairie climate. With careful planning and tending, they produce saleable vegetables starting as early as April until early November, depending on the weather. The quality of their produce is always first rate and is a hit with foodies and market customers looking for unique vegetables not found elsewhere. Always keen to bring new and exotic options to their customers, this year they are growing okra and cantaloupe. According to Adi and Jennifer, they are living their dream.