Ignoring earlier failures, 'pioneering; gardeners vow to bring green revolution to Iqaluit

Inside Iqaluit's Piruqsiavut greenhouse, the zucchini, beets and lettuce sprung up nearly as fast this summer as the new RCMP building under construction next door.

Tomato plants, loaded with ripening red fruit, hang from the 17-foot-high ceiling of the greenhouse, while scarlet runner beans snake along the translucent plastic walls on strings.

As Peter Workman and Debbie Nielsen talk about why her beets have never grown properly, levered windows high up on the roof automatically open. This means the inside temperature has risen higher than 28 C.

Workman quickly diagnoses what's wrong with Neilsen's beets: there's too much peat in the soil mix.

Successfully growing vegetables in a greenhouse can be hard. That's because gardeners must reproduce nature's conditions by providing the right kinds of soil, fertilizers and temperature ranges for their plants.

This a tough when the closest source of topsoil is a couple of thousand kilometres away and Iqaluit's temperature roller-coasts from chilly to sunny during the course of a single day.

Because of the challenges involved, Iqaluit's greenhouse will never be a farm, and probably it will never even be self-sufficient, admits Workman, president of the Iqaluit Community Greenhouse Society, which runs the Piruqsiavut greenhouse.

"It's what I would call an admirable pursuit," he says.

And the goal of the greenhouse? To show that it's possible to eat locally and reduce the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions needed to ship fresh produce to Iqaluit.

While some people look at the Piruqsiavut greenhouse and see just a bunch of vegetables, Workman sees the greenhouse as part of the answer to ensuring food security and curbing global warming.

"From a climate change and sustainability view, it makes sense," Workman says.

The greenhouse also is a social experiment, he says, which can help people to learn more about where they food they eat comes from.

Each plot in the greenhouse consists of two plastic bins and a shelf. The 80 members of the greenhouse society look after the plots in groups of five. They all help with the tomatoes.

While there are a few marigolds and pansies thriving in the greenhouse, members are encouraged to grow vegetables instead of flowers.

"We want people to grow food and maximize the soil," Workman says.

To prove how much food the greenhouse produces, everyone weighs every beet, bunch of lettuce or tomato that is harvested.

By comparing the crops with the expense of their production, Workman hopes this exercise will eventually show how much it costs to produce lettuce and other vegetables in Iqaluit – something no one has been able to do.

It may just turn out to be cheaper and more efficient to grow vegetables in Iqaluit than one might think, he suggests.

In the meantime, the greenhouse gardeners are still working out how to grow vegetables in bins and hanging containers.

Broccoli goes to seed and peppers won't grow, they've discovered. Last summer, they netted only five to seven pounds of tomatoes from the containers. But this year Workman expects a much larger yield.

Most of the greenhouse vegetables are sure to end up in salads, but the greenhouse won't make any money, even if it's become a bit of a tourist attraction for VIPs who visit Iqaluit.

The Piruqsiavut greenhouse was designed and built and equipped with $160,000, mainly from the Government of Nunavut.

Since then, the non-profit greenhouse society has received $50,000 from the Annenberg Foundation to make some improvements, $5,000 from the Mountain Equipment Co-op, and smaller amounts from other sources.

The Iqaluit greenhouse society initially had a far more ambitious plan to build a $4 million greenhouse, but the federal government didn't come through with the money.

So the group went ahead with building its smaller, 20- foot-by-48-foot greenhouse at a cost of about $100,000, to demonstrate that a greenhouse in Iqaluit could work.

However, Piruqsiavut is not the first government-funded greenhouse to show that it's possible to grow vegetables in Iqaluit.

Helen and Tom Webster spearheaded the construction of a plastic-covered greenhouse near the old arena in 1974. The history of an earlier glass-covered greenhouse, built during the 1960s, seems to have disappeared from memory and the public record.

Workman, who remains focused on Iqaluit's current greenhouse effort, says the project should be longer lasting because so many people in Iqaluit are now involved in the greenhouse society.

For the moment, Workman is more worried about ­weather.

"If it stays warm in here, we'll be fine," he says.

A heating system hasn't been connected to the greenhouse, so temperature regulation in the greenhouse still depends on the sun and passive heat retention from water-filled bins on the floor.

The greenhouse will close down sometime in late September, after its vegetables have been harvested and weighed. Extra tomatoes will go to the women's shelter in Apex.

All members will pitch in to clean up the greenhouse before cold weather moves in.

The greenhouse society's plans for 2009 include starting vegetables outdoors in covered boxes outside the greenhouse and, depending on funding, perhaps building a second greenhouse in Iqaluit.

To get involved, contact the greenhouse society at iqaluitgreenhouse@yahoo.com