|
|
Farm of the Future
|
Article by Gary Martin
Photos by Gary Martin and Hydro-Taste
|
|
Vertical hydroponic growing units look to a high-producing future for fruit and vegetables.
Just 12 years ago, Chester Bullock was soil farming in Missouri...and discouraged. "I had $200 in my hand, and that was all I had to call my own in this world," he remembers. "I knew I had to find another business if I was to survive financially."
For the next seven years he experimented with hydroponics on a small scale, developed his own liquid organic fertilizer, and patented a unique design for stacking planters on poles to save space and make it easy to pick the fruit.
When his Hydro-Taste U-pick farm near Bradenton, Florida, opened for business in 2003, he sold 150,000 pounds of strawberries the first year from 50,000 plants grown on just 3/8th of an acre of land.
|
|
Chester Bullock works among the strawberries, always from a standing position.
|
|
The hydroponic strawberry plants were automatically fed a liquid fertilizer solution three times every 24 hours for about three minutes each time, using a total of just 1,500 gallons of water a day, including the fertilizer.
A similar number of strawberry plants grown in the ground would have required five acres of land and used up to 40,000 gallons of water every day, Bullock said.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil and feeding them with liquid nutrients. Bullock designed and patented his own hydroponic growing units made of dense and durable Styrofoam, four plant containers to each section that can be stacked on a pole five high. This gives each Hydro-Stacker tower room for 20 plants and takes up just four square feet of ground space. The stacked growing units are planted in double rows in a north to south direction to make most efficient use of sunlight.
Marigolds border the U-pick strawberries at Hydro-Taste U-pick. |
|
Picking berries or anything else growing in the stacked plant containers is easy because there is no bending or stooping required: the fruit is at a level almost anyone can reach, including people in wheelchairs. The growing containers rotate so plants on all sides can be picked easily.
Bullock invested about $150,000 to put his 50,000-plant strawberry farm together, a figure he says he recovered the first year. |
This past fall, in spite of hurricanes that crisscrossed his state in record numbers, Bullock planted his strawberry plugs on September 23 and was picking strawberries by mid- November. The everbearing variety will continue to produce until next June, and even then they will still be producing berries. Early in the season the U-pick price is $4.50 per pound, and becomes a bit lower as the season continues. The vine-ripened berries are large, sweet, and amazingly consistent in size. Thoroughly ripe ones have been tested at 38 percent sugar.
The plants are fed with what Bullock calls "Secret Sauce," his own blend of organic fertilizer in conventional numbers plus many all-important micronutrients.
Plastic tubing connects all the stacked units and disperses the nutrients through a diffuser at the top of each tower. The nutrients then flow by gravity down through each planter toward the ground, where any excess can be collected and recycled to the reservoir. The funnel shape of each plant container encourages roots to follow the nutrients downward.
Strawberries may be the major attraction at Hydro-Taste farm, but they are not the only produce grown there. Sweet corn towers above everything else in the high-rise containers. Cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli grow huge as they completely envelop their growing units. Chili peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, green beans, basil, cucumbers, and onions fill other stacked growing units. Even the landscaping leading to the entrance of the store is growing in stacked hydroponic containers overflowing with the color of viburnum, begonias, and impatiens. |
Sweet corn grows in hydroponic stacked units, 20 plants in four square feet of ground space. |
|
Growing food items vertically has major advantages. Birds that would ordinarily decimate any sweet fruit grown in the open will sit in nearby trees and look longingly at the thousands of ripe berries, but never make a move to go after them. It may be that berries growing above ground do not offer birds a place to perch while dining.
Insects and disease also seem to avoid this farm of produce towers. Bullock believes that may be because the plants have such good exposure to both sunlight and moving air. He also credits the superior health of the plants to growing in near perfect conditions.
The entrance to Bullock's U-pick store is landscaped with hydroponic flowers and herbs. |
|
But he is ready should a disease or insect problem suddenly show up. "We have an automatic spray system over the plants in case we need to spray for insects or fungus," he said. The built-in system can spray all 50,000 plants within 13 minutes. His organic insect spray is a mix of soap, water, and hot pepper, but it has rarely been used.
The farm has 25,000 feet of underground pipe, with another 20,000 feet of above ground feed lines. The white plastic tubing used above ground has been carefully engineered in three color layers to help prevent the liquid solution from heating up in the sun. The tubing is white on the outside, with a black layer in the middle, and white again on the inside.
|
The entire ground surface under the Hydro-Stacker units is covered with a rubberized plastic cloth that animals will not walk on. Even customers who bring their pets along find dogs put on the brakes and will not step foot on the black cloth.
Florida's occasional frost also has been given some thought. The entire growing area can be quickly covered with cloth. Then, sprinklers located below the lowest-growing plants saturate the ground with water, which by itself is sufficient to raise air temperatures surrounding the plants by 12 degrees. All the while the plants remain dry.
With the success of his first few years, Bullock is planning to double the number of strawberry plants he grows. He is marketing his Hydro-Stacker units along with his "Secret Sauce" fertilizer and has formed a growers' cooperative to provide restaurants with a steady and reliable supply of vine-ripened organic tomatoes.
"I truly believe this is the future of farming," he said. "There is no other way to raise so much produce in so small a space with so little water. Isn't that exactly what is needed today?"
|
Hydroponic tomatoes grow freely high above the ground. |
|
For more information visit the farm's web site at
www.hydrostacker.com or call 941-739-6511.
What Holds the Plants Up?
With no soil to hold plants in place, what keeps them upright? In some types
of hydroponics the plants are tied in place while their roots swim in liquid
nutrients. But on Chester Bullock's Hydro-Taste farm plants are raised in a mixture of perlite and vermiculite, both natural minerals mined from the earth.
Perlite is a volcanic mineral that expands, like popcorn, up to 20 times its
normal volume when heated quickly to high temperatures. It is sterile with a neutral pH. Each particle is covered with tiny cavities that hold moisture and nutrients, making them available to plant roots. Because of its shape, it holds
air which is also a benefit to plant roots.
Vermiculite is actually hydrated magnesium aluminum silicate, a lightweight,
inorganic compressible, highly absorbent material used as a filler. It is readily
available almost everywhere in the world.
Used in combination, these two materials help deliver everything a plant
needs to survive...water, nutrients, oxygen.
|
|
