Husband and I made a trek to my neck of the woods for the weekend to visit my parents and grandmothers. For this particular venture, Dad made arrangements for us to tour Mr. Slay's Greenhouse.
He and his wife have been in the Greenhouse Tomato business for the past seven years and before that they ran Slay's Apple Orchard.
Mr. Slay was gracious enough to give us a tour of his farm and even a few quick lessons on tomato farming.
There were rows and rows of tomato vines tied to support cables that were suspended from the ceiling. In the center of the greenhouse was the thermostat that controlled the temperature inside as well as the watering and fertilizing schedule.
The tomatoes are actually planted in bags (two plants per bag) above ground and the "body" of the plant is trained to grow sideways along the cables. The arms of the plant grow up, diagonally, and are attached to strings hanging from the top cables. (you can see the orange strings in the picture above) The water system consists of pipes that run down each row and have smaller tubes that carry water into each bag. When the thermostat gives the signal, the water runs through fertilizer barrels to pick up the fertilizer before spraying the bags for a couple of seconds at a time. Who knew greenhouses were so technical!?!?
Then the tomatoes are on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday picking schedule.
Perhaps my favorite thing about the whole process was Mr. Slay's store. He has a section of a barn with shelves of tomatoes just like a grocery store. Anyone can come up at anytime and get what they need.
His cash register runs on the honor system!!
It was such a neat place, and this was just part one of our tour. As we were walking out we passed an old house that was mostly covered by a pomegranate bush. There's a neat story behind this old house...
...but I think that story deserves a post of its own. Stand by :)
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