Winter greenhouse lights up the night south of Waterloo
Many who live south of Waterloo or pass that way in the evening have seen a strange orange glow west of Route 3.
It’s not a large fire, nor is it a landing place for flying saucers.
Three St. Louis entrepreneurs have chosen to blaze an agricultural trail in Monroe County, growing thousands of pounds of tomatoes in a hydroponic greenhouse facility on JJ Road. Bright lights that extend winter growing days are creating the glow.
Chris Clark, Ray Mumme and Ray’s fiancé, Pat Tocco, have joined forces to build and operate this agricultural wonder under the name Liberty Farms Hydroponics.
The Republic-Times recently visited Clark and Mumme at the 12,000-square-foot greenhouse filled with 2,400 tomato plants rapidly emerging from long rows of blocks of plastic-wrapped coconut fiber.
At the far end of the greenhouse, there are stacked white containers with culinary herbs emerging from each corner.
“We rotate the stacks 90 degrees each day to ensure even lighting,” Mumme said.
Each tomato plant and herb stack is served by a drip hose, delivering nutrients and minerals in extremely clean water. This water is recycled for further use.
The water originates from a well outside the greenhouse and is filtered through two water softeners and then forced through reverse osmosis filters.
“It comes in with 500 parts per million particulate matter,” Mumme explained. “We reduce that to four parts, all with a carefully controlled pH – or acidity. We don’t want anything
interfering with the operation of the hydroponic drip system.”
The greenhouse features fans to circulate air, propane heaters and an automatic system to open double-layered roof panels to let hot air out when temperatures exceed 76 degrees.
“That happens often, even on cold winter days when it is sunny,” Clark explained.
And there are 36 1,000-watt, high-pressure sodium vapor lights.
“We want 12 hours of sunlight each growing day, all winter,” Clark explained.
On the shortest day of the year here, there’s about 9.5 hours of sunlight followed by 14.5 of darkness. So, these lights operate into the night to make up the deficit.
Mumme explained that this technology is used extensively in Canada, where winter days are shorter than here. The lights are controlled by timers and at the end of the growing day, they shut down over several minutes until the greenhouse, which has lit up the entire horizon, is pitch black. As days grow longer, the lights are employed less and less.
The growing season for tomatoes will end this summer, with replanting starting in the fall.
The partners broke ground in August, erecting a steel frame and enclosing it in frosted plastic. The tomatoes were started in mid-October in St. Louis, and are a variety of beefsteak tomatoes from Europe, where this technology is also used extensively.
The emerging plants were transferred into their fiber blocks in early December. Showing one tomato that was turning bright orange, Clark and Mumme said they’ll be sending tomatoes to market this month.
Asked who will use them, they indicated that Schnucks will sell them locally, and they have a marketing organization that will distribute the rest, many to area restaurants.
“They are all sold for this year,” Mumme asserted. “Next year, we will have tomatoes ready to go by Thanksgiving.”
There are several reasons, in addition to potential income, that the three are engaged in this endeavor.
Mumme, a retired professional chef, cites quality.
“Many people don’t realize that most tomatoes in stores during the winter come from Mexico or other foreign sources. They are picked green and shipped in trucks with ethylene gas circulating inside to make them ‘ripen,'” he said. “You’ll taste the difference when these arrive in stores. The juice will run down your face when you bite into one.”
Other tomatoes are also “engineered” to make them tougher and easier to harvest with machines.
Of course, tomatoes are fruits and they grow from flowers. So, who pollinates them to cause fruit to grow? Bees, from hives purchased for the purpose, are buzzing around this greenhouse, stopping and flying on to perform that task.
Ground beetles have been placed inside as well. They eat mites that might otherwise attack the plants.
“We are using no chemicals or pesticides,” Mumme affirmed. “These products will be about as organic as you can get.”
The plants are attached to strings that are attached to wires high above the floor. As the tomatoes grow up the strings and the fruit ripens, they will be harvested from the bottom up. The strings supporting the tomatoes will, in turn, be leaned and lowered and unspooled from above to allow the early growth to sink to the floor.
“In a normal full season, we should get 30 to 35 feet of growth,” Clark said.
This year’s crop, starting late, will probably be limited to 20 feet for each plant.
Clark and Mumme said each tomato will weigh about seven to nine ounces at harvest time, and each plant will produce one to 1.5 pounds – each week of the season. That’s 2,400 to 3,600 pounds of fresh, ripe tomatoes a week for 30 to 32 weeks in a normal year – some 80,000 to 120,000 pounds.
“This would not be possible in an outdoor setting, with weather vagaries and pests and other animals eating them,” Clark pointed out. “And the tomato growing season in this greenhouse is the winter, when many farmers are idle after harvests. We won’t be growing tomatoes in the summer, but the herbs are a year-round crop and we will be hard at work preparing for fall tomato planting.”
Clark and Mumme said they hope to add future winter greenhouses elsewhere. The technology is also potentially profitable for growing other cash crops such as tri-color peppers or cucumbers, they indicated.
If you want to learn more about the operation, check out the Liberty Farms Hydroponics on Facebook.
