A tale of two glasshouses

Here at the nursery we grow organically – we have a wide range of produce that changes with the seasons and that grow in the ground. We are growing 3 types of tomatoes – our favourite is Maskotva which has a good flavour, is a low spreading bush that just sits on top of the Mipex and best of all is a super early cherry tomato that gets in well before the blight – we’re surrounded by Common Land here and prone to all kinds of fun fungal infections.

Last night by contrast, thanks to my involvement in the Horticultural Workforce project I got to go round the Tomato greenhouse at Thanet Earth.

This is 11 Hectares of tomatoes under 1 massive venlo glass structure.

The tomatoes are grown in rockwool (hydroponically) and they grow alternate blocks on inner wires and outer wires. They grow about 11 varieties specified by the supermarkets and each plant consists of 2 vines grafted onto a rootstock. The vines are draped around and then go up the wires reaching a length of about 15 meters. The stems are defoliated as the fruit is removed. As the outer vines reach the end of their lives the inner ones are started off – the defoliation allows enough light to make it work – the glass is optimised to allow maximum light – no frames etc. This means they’re able to crop every week throughout the year providing heat and power from an onsite CHP system which also produces CO2.

The site uses 50 hives of bumble bees a week (we’ve used 1 this year!) and uses Macrolophus as a predator to deal with tomato leaf miner, white fly and red spider mite. Macrolophus is not part of our standard range but we did try them a couple of years ago and they did spectacularly clobber the flea beetle that were munching our rocket.

It’s always a delight to see what other people have done. Hydroponics is not what we’re into here but the engineer in me thought it was fantastic – a really clever way of boosting tomato production.