Strawberry tents forever
MASARYKTOWN –
It could be a marriage made in a strawberry field, or a tent, to be more precise.
Business owner Rodney Busto was looking for a local farmer to test out his new vertical growing system. Farm owners Ted and Lisa Kessel weren’t entirely satisfied with vertical growing system they’d been using to produce U-pick strawberries.
The marriage seems to have paid off.
Right now, the Kessels are producing a steady crop of berries at their 19-acre Sweetfields Farm on Benes Road outside of Masaryktown.
Instead of being planted in the ground, the Kessels’ berries are planted in sturdy plastic bags that hang over a rack system inside a tent covered with an opaque plastic film and white mesh.
The tent looks like something you might see in a science fiction movie, where humans stationed light years from earth grow fruits and vegetables in high-tech tents or greenhouses.
“We get compared to Disney a lot,” said Lisa about the comments she’s heard from some of their U-pick customers.
She said last Saturday they sold 55 pounds of ripe red berries.
“We had to turn people away.”
The growing system was designed by Busto, who since 1998 has owned Accuplastics Inc. in Brooksville.
An engineer and product developer, Busto holds a patent to a product called the Terra Toggle Rootball Tree Anchor. The anchors are little plastics gizmos with attached nylon straps. When driven into the ground, they can hold up newly planted trees by their rootballs even in the most extreme weather conditions. The product has been tested by the University of Florida.
Busto adapted the system to anchor the tent on the Kessels’ farm.
Busto said that while the plastic shell would blow away, the tent’s flexible structure would likely be standing after a hurricane.
Ted Kessel said Busto came looking for Sweetfields last fall after the inventor saw their corn maze featured on a Tampa news broadcast.
“He needed someone to test out his product,” Ted said.
Busto said there is nothing new about vertical growing systems or planting in plastic bags, but what his system does is bring the two concepts together under one plastic roof.
Compost made from organic fertilizer, coconut husks and pine bark is stuffed into square plastic bags about the size of a throw pillow. The bags are slit open on one side and draped over skinny wooden boards attached to plastic poles.
Each bag gets a feeder for water and nutrients.
The plastic tent lets 93 percent of the “good growing light” in while letting escape the intense heat that can be a problem with traditional grow houses, Busto said. The plastic cover also protects the plants from the rain, which can cause fungi, he added.
One of the system’s big advantages, Busto said, is that it uses 95 percent less water than traditional production. During a growing season, Busto said farmers typically use 40 gallons of water per strawberry plant but his system only uses two gallons per plant.
During the recent cold snap, Bay area farmers sprayed their citrus and strawberry fields with millions of gallons of water to protect their crops from the sub-freezing temperatures.
Busto said the Kessels didn’t need to spray their plants.
And when the temperature dipped to 18 degrees, the Kessels kept the temperature inside the tent at 37 degrees with one kerosene heater.
“They used $300 worth of kerosene to protect a $12,000 or $15,000 worth of crop,” Busto said.
The Kessels’ strawberries are grown organically, which means they are not sprayed with chemical herbicides or pesticides. The berries can be eaten right off the vine without washing them.
“There are tremendous amounts of chemicals used” in commercial agriculture, Busto said.
Another advantage to his vertical growing system, Busto said, is that it increases plant density by six times.
That means a tent the size of Kessels’, one-twelfth of an acre, can produce as many berries as a half-acre plot.
Most vertical growing systems on the market are intended more for hobbyist growers than big farming operations, Busto said.
But if his prototype at Sweetfields proves successful, he hopes his system will be used by large-scale producers. This could be an especially sweet outcome, since Busto said all of his research and development is self-funded.
“This is totally new and ambitious,” he said.
Strawberry U-pick is now open at Sweetfields. Call 352-279-0977 to check supply before going out to the farm at 17250 Benes Road.
Community news editor Timothy P. Howsare can be reached at 352-544-5284 or [email protected].
