One of the things that is synonymous with membership of the European Union (from those who remember when we were not part of the EU) is the year-around supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. Some of us will find it strange to think that once, seasonal vegetables was actually a part of life in the UK, and that the supply of certain things at certain times of the year was quite simply unheard of. These people no doubt worry that the looming Brexit decision may make those days return, but there are a number of innovative LED Rope Lights and energy-efficient LED Strip Lights which have proved that the year around supply of certain fruit and vegetables will not be a problem.

Asda – a household name supermarket in the UK- has announced that is capable of – and will sell British tomatoes throughout the year starting from 2017. This is quite a large announcement, as historically, tomatoes simply do not take well to British weather – especially in Winter, and even in greenhouses.

The tomato plant is simply not hardy, and even if placed in a greenhouse, will likely die at the first frost. Lack of light in the winter season can also mean that the tomato plant produces far less yield than what is viable and our soil is simply not suited for them anyway. The UK more often than not imports tomatoes from countries such as Spain, in order to experience red, juicy, sun ripened tomatoes of the highest quality.

But, that was the past, and things have really changed since 1969 – when we were first allowed into the EU. While indeed the UK is still the UK, certain things such as technology have come on leaps and bounds in the past 50 years.

Asda are no strangers to using solutions such as LED Lighting to overcome problems, and their suppliers -  Liverpool growery FlavourFresh -- have been reported to use LED Lighting across all 12 hectares of their impressive glasshouse groweries, with an average yield of over 200m tomatoes per year.

Implementing LED Lighting such as rope light lighting and LED strip lights within their groweries has meant that the tomatoes which come from them are of the quality, if not better, than those grown in Spain- and there’s no need to worry about GMOs or other chemicals being part of the product. There’s no strangeness involved with using LED Lighting to grow plants - Certain “ wave signatures” of LED-generated light are simply shone onto the plant, and the plant is fooled into thinking that the LED is actually the sun. Hence, the plant responds with growth.

You might imagine that such a growery would use a startling amount of energy to provide the warm and bright conditions needed to promote tomatoes throughout the year, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. LED Lighting is undoubtedly energy efficient, and offers results as natural as possible for great tasting produce which stands up to the stringent taste and quality tests of national supermarkets.