Julie
05-10-2010, 07:06 AM
This man in my mentor. - Julie
M E R I D I A N M A G A Z I N E
By Jim Kennard
We’ve all seen plants grown vertically, such as pole beans, but how many have seen a hydroponic greenhouse operation where many different vegetable varieties are grown vertically? Why do they do that – isn’t it a lot of extra work, to string everything up like that? What’s the point, anyway?
The “point” or the reason for growing vertically is to maximize the yield of healthy fruit in a given space, and to eliminate losses from bugs, rodents and other small animals, moisture, disease and foot traffic.
It may be hard to imagine, but the best hydroponic growers can produce 330 tons of tomatoes on a single acre. That’s 660,000 pounds of food! Imagine what you could do on just a hundredth of an acre if you could replicate the hydroponic grower’s results. Could your family live on 6,600 pounds of produce? I think so! And what you will learn about today is sometimes called “the poor man’s hydroponic method” of gardening because we have adapted some of the most important elements of hydroponic growing to the backyard garden while keeping all the benefits of growing in the soil and direct sunshine.
Now, don’t expect to replicate the hydroponic grower’s results exactly, after all they have up to a million dollars invested PER ACRE in buildings and equipment, and their labor costs are high as well, not to mention the fact that they grow year-round, instead of the 6-8 months we get.
To put things in perspective, a tractor farmer can reasonably expect to produce between 30 and 35 tons of tomatoes per acre if he has a good crop. That’s one tenth of the hydroponic grower’s yield – and the tractor farmer has a significant investment in equipment, etc. also.
So what CAN the family gardener expect to produce on his little plot of 1/100th of an acre? Between a half and one ton of fruits and vegetables is not unreasonable to expect, if it’s done right. That’s 1,000-2,000# in only 450 square feet of garden space (which translates into 50-100 tons per acre!).
Is this really possible? Yes it is, and here’s how: Grow vining plants vertically, and grow ever-bearing crops, or multiple plantings of single-crop varieties. And feed your plants properly and well, to assure they continue to produce throughout the season. The formula for a complete balanced natural mineral nutrient mix is available at www.growfood.com in the Learn section.
And don’t just go for volume, but grow high value crops! Tomatoes, even at the summer bargain price of $1 per pound, are a much more valuable choice than potatoes, corn or most other choices. For example, a 15 foot row of tomatoes can produce 400-600# of luscious fruit, while that same space planted in potatoes will yield 100-150#, and corn would give you 45-60 ears.
How is it done, and what investment is required? You can grow right in your native soil, with no soil amendments, and accomplish the numbers I’ve mentioned, but let’s talk about another option that can give you even more in that limited space, and that’s growing in containers, which we call Grow-Boxes.
Find a sunny level space just 16’ by 28’ and build 4 open-bottom frames of 2” X 8” treated lumber 4’ wide and 16’ long, spacing them so as to have 3’ aisles.
If you were to plant 4 rows of non-climbing plants in each box, you would have 256 feet of plants, which is great, but I’m going to recommend you use much of your space for growing just two rows of climbing or vining plants in each box. It’s called vertical growing, and this is how you will really maximize your yields in limited space.
To grow your plants tall you’ll need to start with indeterminate, rather than determinate, bush, or patio varieties. Why? Determinate tomatoes, beans, etc. generally grow only 18-24" tall, and set their fruit in a fairly short time span. Indeterminate varieties continue to grow and produce fruit over many months, until killed by frost.
The details of growing healthy seedlings and transplanting into your garden are an article for another day, so I’ll assume you already have healthy seedlings or you’re growing from seeds in the garden. If you are buying plants avoid those with long thin stems. These plants have “stretched” looking for sunlight because of crowded growing conditions. They never fully recover from the thin, weak stems this causes and your yields will suffer greatly.
All tall-growing plants are sensitive to frost damage, so wait to put them into the garden until the danger of frost is past. Late April to early May is the ideal time in most temperate climates.
There are numerous “systems” and methods for growing vining and climbing plants. I’ll describe a few, and the differences and improvements we recommend: Many people have used tomato cages with some success; others have planted using “teepee poles”; some folks use stakes; some use trellises; and some swear by fencing and/or cattle panels.
For optimum growth and healthy, tasty produce plants must have full sunlight all day long – especially all fruiting plants. And it’s not just trees and buildings that steal the sunlight! Even the plant itself can create shade and slow its own and its neighbors’ growth. The teepee and tomato cage are examples of how plants can shade themselves too much and thereby retard growth and reduce yields.
With teepee poles plants start out far apart when they’re small, but as they grow they get closer and closer together until they all converge, and the large plants that need lots of sunlight are all packed into a small space where none of them get enough light. And the inside of the teepee is in total shade, so all the plants are lacking any sunshine on the inside of the teepee.
Tomato cages confine plants, making pruning difficult, and many branches grow together inside the cage until everything is crowded and nothing gets enough light. And stakes, trellises, etc. offer improvements over the first two methods mentioned, however they have their own limitations.
Adapting the hydroponic growers’ method of growing plants close together - in one row - and sending alternating plants up baling twine strings to opposite sides of a T-frame is the best solution for producing the greatest yields, in the least space, and at the lowest cost.
Pole beans are planted 2” apart in one row at the side of the soil-bed, with baling twine 4” apart on both sides of the T structure coming down to tie-wire strung at ground level near the base of the plants.
Most of the other climbing plants, including tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, and vining squash, are planted 9” apart – again in one row at the side of the soil-bed, and the baling twine is placed 18” apart on both sides of the T structure and strung to one tie-wire near the base of the plant stems.
By the time plants are 12” tall sucker stems should be removed, they should be guided around the strings, and pruning of sucker stems must be continued weekly to assure a single-stem plant with maximum fruit set.
For tomatoes pruning consists of pinching off the tiny new stem that begins to grow in the crotch between the compound leaf and the stem, and doing it as soon as possible, so the plant wastes no energy growing more branches and leaves. The plant will then produce a “hand” of 4 to 7 tomatoes every 5-7 inches until frost kills the plant. In temperate climates you can expect 15-30# of fruit on each plant, depending on variety and growing conditions, and in warm climates up to 50% more.
To prune cucumbers, squash and melons let the sucker stems grow past the first leaf and female blossom (the flower with a tiny fruit forming behind it) and then pinch off the stem.
Because it requires about eight weeks from blossom to ripe fruit, eight weeks before the average first fall frost date cut off the growing tip of your plants. This stops the plant from producing new blossoms, so that it can use all its energy ripening the fruit it has already started. And if you have green tomatoes when the frost comes just remove them and store in the basement or garage. They will ripen over the next few weeks and you can have fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Get started now for a great growing season of healthy and tasty home-grown produce!
Jim Kennard, President
Food For Everyone Foundation
"Teaching the world to grow food one family at a time."
www.foodforeveryone.org
M E R I D I A N M A G A Z I N E
By Jim Kennard
We’ve all seen plants grown vertically, such as pole beans, but how many have seen a hydroponic greenhouse operation where many different vegetable varieties are grown vertically? Why do they do that – isn’t it a lot of extra work, to string everything up like that? What’s the point, anyway?
The “point” or the reason for growing vertically is to maximize the yield of healthy fruit in a given space, and to eliminate losses from bugs, rodents and other small animals, moisture, disease and foot traffic.
It may be hard to imagine, but the best hydroponic growers can produce 330 tons of tomatoes on a single acre. That’s 660,000 pounds of food! Imagine what you could do on just a hundredth of an acre if you could replicate the hydroponic grower’s results. Could your family live on 6,600 pounds of produce? I think so! And what you will learn about today is sometimes called “the poor man’s hydroponic method” of gardening because we have adapted some of the most important elements of hydroponic growing to the backyard garden while keeping all the benefits of growing in the soil and direct sunshine.
Now, don’t expect to replicate the hydroponic grower’s results exactly, after all they have up to a million dollars invested PER ACRE in buildings and equipment, and their labor costs are high as well, not to mention the fact that they grow year-round, instead of the 6-8 months we get.
To put things in perspective, a tractor farmer can reasonably expect to produce between 30 and 35 tons of tomatoes per acre if he has a good crop. That’s one tenth of the hydroponic grower’s yield – and the tractor farmer has a significant investment in equipment, etc. also.
So what CAN the family gardener expect to produce on his little plot of 1/100th of an acre? Between a half and one ton of fruits and vegetables is not unreasonable to expect, if it’s done right. That’s 1,000-2,000# in only 450 square feet of garden space (which translates into 50-100 tons per acre!).
Is this really possible? Yes it is, and here’s how: Grow vining plants vertically, and grow ever-bearing crops, or multiple plantings of single-crop varieties. And feed your plants properly and well, to assure they continue to produce throughout the season. The formula for a complete balanced natural mineral nutrient mix is available at www.growfood.com in the Learn section.
And don’t just go for volume, but grow high value crops! Tomatoes, even at the summer bargain price of $1 per pound, are a much more valuable choice than potatoes, corn or most other choices. For example, a 15 foot row of tomatoes can produce 400-600# of luscious fruit, while that same space planted in potatoes will yield 100-150#, and corn would give you 45-60 ears.
How is it done, and what investment is required? You can grow right in your native soil, with no soil amendments, and accomplish the numbers I’ve mentioned, but let’s talk about another option that can give you even more in that limited space, and that’s growing in containers, which we call Grow-Boxes.
Find a sunny level space just 16’ by 28’ and build 4 open-bottom frames of 2” X 8” treated lumber 4’ wide and 16’ long, spacing them so as to have 3’ aisles.
If you were to plant 4 rows of non-climbing plants in each box, you would have 256 feet of plants, which is great, but I’m going to recommend you use much of your space for growing just two rows of climbing or vining plants in each box. It’s called vertical growing, and this is how you will really maximize your yields in limited space.
To grow your plants tall you’ll need to start with indeterminate, rather than determinate, bush, or patio varieties. Why? Determinate tomatoes, beans, etc. generally grow only 18-24" tall, and set their fruit in a fairly short time span. Indeterminate varieties continue to grow and produce fruit over many months, until killed by frost.
The details of growing healthy seedlings and transplanting into your garden are an article for another day, so I’ll assume you already have healthy seedlings or you’re growing from seeds in the garden. If you are buying plants avoid those with long thin stems. These plants have “stretched” looking for sunlight because of crowded growing conditions. They never fully recover from the thin, weak stems this causes and your yields will suffer greatly.
All tall-growing plants are sensitive to frost damage, so wait to put them into the garden until the danger of frost is past. Late April to early May is the ideal time in most temperate climates.
There are numerous “systems” and methods for growing vining and climbing plants. I’ll describe a few, and the differences and improvements we recommend: Many people have used tomato cages with some success; others have planted using “teepee poles”; some folks use stakes; some use trellises; and some swear by fencing and/or cattle panels.
For optimum growth and healthy, tasty produce plants must have full sunlight all day long – especially all fruiting plants. And it’s not just trees and buildings that steal the sunlight! Even the plant itself can create shade and slow its own and its neighbors’ growth. The teepee and tomato cage are examples of how plants can shade themselves too much and thereby retard growth and reduce yields.
With teepee poles plants start out far apart when they’re small, but as they grow they get closer and closer together until they all converge, and the large plants that need lots of sunlight are all packed into a small space where none of them get enough light. And the inside of the teepee is in total shade, so all the plants are lacking any sunshine on the inside of the teepee.
Tomato cages confine plants, making pruning difficult, and many branches grow together inside the cage until everything is crowded and nothing gets enough light. And stakes, trellises, etc. offer improvements over the first two methods mentioned, however they have their own limitations.
Adapting the hydroponic growers’ method of growing plants close together - in one row - and sending alternating plants up baling twine strings to opposite sides of a T-frame is the best solution for producing the greatest yields, in the least space, and at the lowest cost.
Pole beans are planted 2” apart in one row at the side of the soil-bed, with baling twine 4” apart on both sides of the T structure coming down to tie-wire strung at ground level near the base of the plants.
Most of the other climbing plants, including tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, and vining squash, are planted 9” apart – again in one row at the side of the soil-bed, and the baling twine is placed 18” apart on both sides of the T structure and strung to one tie-wire near the base of the plant stems.
By the time plants are 12” tall sucker stems should be removed, they should be guided around the strings, and pruning of sucker stems must be continued weekly to assure a single-stem plant with maximum fruit set.
For tomatoes pruning consists of pinching off the tiny new stem that begins to grow in the crotch between the compound leaf and the stem, and doing it as soon as possible, so the plant wastes no energy growing more branches and leaves. The plant will then produce a “hand” of 4 to 7 tomatoes every 5-7 inches until frost kills the plant. In temperate climates you can expect 15-30# of fruit on each plant, depending on variety and growing conditions, and in warm climates up to 50% more.
To prune cucumbers, squash and melons let the sucker stems grow past the first leaf and female blossom (the flower with a tiny fruit forming behind it) and then pinch off the stem.
Because it requires about eight weeks from blossom to ripe fruit, eight weeks before the average first fall frost date cut off the growing tip of your plants. This stops the plant from producing new blossoms, so that it can use all its energy ripening the fruit it has already started. And if you have green tomatoes when the frost comes just remove them and store in the basement or garage. They will ripen over the next few weeks and you can have fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Get started now for a great growing season of healthy and tasty home-grown produce!
Jim Kennard, President
Food For Everyone Foundation
"Teaching the world to grow food one family at a time."
www.foodforeveryone.org