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Horticultural consulting & technology

Better strawberry and greenhouse production systems.

Vaerens combines horticultural consulting with purpose-built software and crop monitoring to design, improve and understand commercial growing systems. We work with growers, nurseries and project developers.

Strawberry plants with ripe fruit in elevated troughs in a commercial greenhouse
Commercial strawberry production system.

Three areas

How Vaerens works

Consulting, software and crop monitoring are closely connected. Questions that come up in production decide what gets built, and better measurement makes the advice more specific.

01

Consulting

Production systems, crop strategy, greenhouse projects, irrigation, fertigation and crop performance.
Consulting
02

Tools

Practical horticultural software for calculations growers and consultants make in real production.
Tools
03

KOBRA

Camera-based crop monitoring and computer vision for measuring how crops develop over time.
KOBRA

Consulting

Production systems, designed around the crop

Vaerens works on the technical decisions that set how a crop performs, in new projects, expansions and production systems already running.

Ripe strawberry held between fingers in a packing facility
Commercial strawberry production.

01

Strawberry production

Support across the full production chain, from plant material through to harvested crop. Work typically starts with a specific question: a crop that is not performing as expected, a system that needs to produce differently, or a decision that has to be made before a season starts.

Because the stages are connected, propagation and substrate decisions are treated as part of the production outcome rather than separate topics.

  • Cultivation strategy across the production cycle
  • Propagation and young plant quality
  • Production systems and substrate cultivation
  • Crop performance assessment
  • Technical problem solving in running crops

02

Greenhouse and growing-system design

The crop comes first. What a crop needs, meaning light, climate, root volume, water and handling, determines the system that should be built around it, and the building follows from that. A greenhouse designed without those requirements settled tends to constrain the crop for its entire working life.

That means working through plant density, row and gutter layout, workflow and supporting infrastructure together, rather than treating the structure as a fixed shell to be filled afterwards.

  • Production requirements translated into system design
  • Layout, plant density and gutter configuration
  • Workflow and labour movement through the crop
  • Irrigation and supporting infrastructure
  • Coordination with builders, suppliers and installers

03

Irrigation and fertigation

Irrigation and nutrition are where production requirements meet what the installed system can actually deliver. Both need to be designed against the crop, the substrate and the water available on site.

  • Irrigation system design and capacity
  • Nutrient strategy and recipe development
  • Water quality and its consequences for the system
  • Matching delivery capacity to peak crop demand
  • Review of existing irrigation and fertigation setups

04

Project development and review

Independent technical input on projects at any stage: before commitments are made, during design, or once a system is running and not doing what it should.

  • New projects, from concept to specification
  • Expansions of existing production sites
  • Review of existing designs and proposals
  • Technical decisions and supplier comparison
  • Troubleshooting production systems already in operation

Contact

Start with the specifics

The crop, the site and the stage the project has reached. Enquiries are answered directly.