Those tomatoes look so damn good
Thanks Pura! It's nice to hear that even when I am growing edibles, they still look like ornamentals! :D Studies have actually shown that consumers care much more about the appearance of their produce, than they do about the taste!
Good Evening Farmers!
I have been traveling around over the last few days visiting a handful of large scale ornamental greenhouse operations, and got a ton of pictures to share! I will try to write a few little bullets under any pictures that need some explanation, but feel free to ask any questions about what you see and I will do my best to explain what you are looking at if it's not clear! The main thing to understand is that these are multi-million or billion dollar operations and a majority of the systems you see are mechanized or automated to reduce labor costs and increase efficiency and uniformity! In some cases the greenhouses are higher tech or lower tech depending on the value of the crop being grown and the expense it warrants. In all cases, the crops are grown on a perpetual schedule, so these are not time lapse photos, but rather I am walking from greenhouse to greenhouse and the plants are of varying ages in different zones of the operation. I am sharing one or two pictures at each stage, even if there were many many greenhouses with plants of that size I assume you can get the idea.
First up,
Rocket Farms, Inc.
These guys were growing mostly potted roses and campanula, and obviously the roses were being grown in their newest and highest tech greenhouses.
Here is a shot of some of their greenhouse roofs, no where near all of their property, but a good view:
Here are their campanula stock plants are various stages:
Doesn't the uniformity just make you want an automated pot spacer so badly?!
And here are their production campanula getting up to size for bloom and sale:
These plants are just starting to bloom and will be shipped out very shortly. . . the consumer gets to see the full bloom, not the grower.
Now onto their more exciting rose production houses!
Here are their propagation houses kept at close to 100% RH with high pressure foggers:
Then a transitional house to harden them off with lower %RH once they are rooted:
Notice the endless rows of HID lighting used to supplement natural light intensity . . . .
They let the roses grow out:
And then run the benches under a horizontal saw blade which does a very rough mechanical topping to every plant to encourage more branching instead of lanky single stems:
The plants are then allowed to grow out again before being flowered:
Anyone trying to count the number of HID lights? I lost track after 20,000 when I was there! Also, check out the number of sulfur pots they have to keep PM in check!
Then finally they start to flower. . . just before shipping of course:
Well, I hope you liked seeing Rocket Farms, Inc. There is more to come in the next few posts!
