This is looking at the lower bays through the roll-up curtain vent which is controlled by a computer. Three computers run the environment inside the greenhouses: one computer rolls up the curtains when the temperature warms up (there is a screen to exclude insects); another computer turns on the exhaust fans at the other end of the house; and yet another runs the furnaces (the white boxes at the top of the greenhouse in the photo).

Another computer controls irrigation. Some days it irrigates once, and other days twice. Mist irirgation helps cool plants.

Unlike the tomatoes, the cucumbers are grown hydroponically in a soilless mix. Cucumbers are direct-seeded into bags of potting soil on February 1. The first harvest usually is around the last week of March. Dave and Jim grow a European-type cucumber called ‘Bologna’ – seedless, burpless, and bitter-free. The seeds are very expensive, about $0.48 per seed. These plants are about 6 weeks old.

Jim is training the cucumber vines up the string and attaching clips.

This is the bloom on the end of the cucumber which is about an inch long. It’s about two weeks from the time the bloom is fully open until the fruit is ready to pick. Unlike cucumbers you may plant in your garden, these cucumbers have no male blooms which is why they are seedless. This also explains why seedless cucumbers are so tender at a large size – because developing seed causes fruit to become tough.

Jim said that seeing the bright yellow flowers in February and March in the dead of winter really lifts his spritis!

In a good year, they can harvest up to 25 fruits per plant, each about 14-16 inches long.

This is a hive of bumblebees used to pollinate the tomato crop. Bumblebees are much better to use in a greenhouse than honeybees – they are cleaner and much better pollinators and less aggressive. The bees arrive in mid-January.

Each hive lasts 8-10 weeks and is replaced once during the season. Jim and Dave used to hand-pollinate flowers but it was too labor-intensive and they couldn’t do as good a job as the bees did. They still hand-pollinate the first cluster of flowers because there is not enough pollen to support a hive.

This is a typical tomato flower truss. When developing fruits become the size of marbles, they are thinned down to 3-4 fruits per cluster. Thinning takes a day and a half and is done about every 10 days or so.

As the vines approach the overhead support wires and the fruit is harvested from the bottom up, the lower leaves and the empty tomato trusses are removed, string is released from the overhead bobbins, and the plants are lowered so that they can continue growing as the season progresses.

In this picture you can see that it is several feet from where the plant comes out of the ground to where it is in its vertical position. By the end of the growing season, there will still be 7-8 feet of vertical plant, and about 15-18 feet of stem laying on the ground, so that each plant has grown 20-25 feet tall but still only 7-8 vertical feet is presented for harvest. This way they don’t need a two-story greenhouse and an extension ladder to pick tomatoes!

It takes 40 hours to strip and lean the plants and this is done every two weeks.

This is a typical cluster of growing fruit, thinned to the four prettiest tomatoes. Note the little plastic hooks that are helping to support the weight of the tomatoes on the string. This prevents the truss from kinking which can reduce nutrient flow to fruit, making them smaller and misshapen.

This photo shows the progression of fruit growth and ripening from the bottom to the top. About the time the tomatoes at the top are ready to harvest they will have been lowered down to the level of the ones at the bottom.