Montreal woman grows fresh strawberries year-round from her indoor GUSH Farm [Video]

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Ophelia Sarakinis found herself looking to start a business, at a time when most businesses were closed.

Thanks to a grant from McGill University, where she had just graduated from the agriculture department, she began growing strawberries in a Kirkland underground parking garage.

Her experiment did bear fruits, literally!

Four years later, the now-25-year-old entrepreneur moved her operation to an industrial sector of the city. With full staff, experience management, and a strawberry production of 15,000 plants in its first year of production, she can provide fresh berries year-round under the name GUSH Farm.

Why strawberries? Because Quebecers eat a lot of them – but they’re usually imported from California or Mexico 10 months of the year.

“They grow a strawberry that’s not tasty. It has low sugar content so that it doesn’t rot as quickly for shelf life,” said Sarakinisi, who spent years studying and experimenting with …