Tunnel gardening lengthens the growing season

Peter Ten Eyck is using innovative farming equipment at his Indian Ladder Farms in Nw Scotland. The high tunnels are so new, in fact, that a visitor might not notice anything out of the ordinary, or think that they were anything more than greenhouses.

“It’s fairly new stuff,” said Tom Gallagher of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Center in Voorheesville. “It’s been around for four or five years.”

High tunnels look like greenhouses, but are open at either end, allowing ventilation. The tunnels create a warm, dry environment for plants.

“Cornell Cooperative Extension is definitely trying to support and encourage the adoption of high tunnel use in New York,” said Chuck Bornt, of the Capital District Vegetable Program with CCE, based in Rensselaer County. “New England has been very successful for many years with high tunnel production. I think that the possibilities are quite endless in tunnels. We have a fairly large grant dedicated to increasing the use of high tunnels in New York through the New York State Farm Viability Institute.”

Ten Eyck is starting his third year with the tunnels. He described them as season extenders — by capturing heat under plastic pulled across plastic tubes, or hoops, one can grow plants faster and earlier in the spring, or longer into the fall.

“So I could really be more of a Southern grower,” he said. “We put up our experimental project.”

Ten Eyck said that he is a member Eco-Apple, which is a group of 11 growers who try to use fewer pesticides. The tunnels allow him to use less fungicide.

“The environment is basically dry,” he said.

Getting started

The tunnels are each 25 feet by 300 feet, and three are tied together for stability. The first bay has fall, or day-neutral, strawberries planted in the ground. After the first spring crop, these plants will produce a second fall crop right through October, Ten Eyck said.

“Fresh strawberries in October is pretty cool,” he said.

Bornt said that high tunnels benefit small commercial growers, or “those that maybe only have one to five acres of vegetables and are marketing at local farmers’ markets. The key is to grow crops that either you can get a good early jump on and get into the marketplace early, or have product during the fall or early winter when outdoor field production is done,” he said.

Ten Eyck’s second bay had housed strawberries in trays elevated off the ground with irrigation piping. The trays were waist-high and were easy for seniors, or those with disabilities, to pick. These would be less labor-intensive, and produce at a time when Ten Eyck’s Jamaican workers had already left for the season, he said.

“That did not work,” he said. The strawberries were planted in coconut husks.

“The soil is essentially sterile,” he said. The pH value of the soil became altered, and iron and other nutrients were thrown off balance. He said that the growers must care for the soil and monitor it closely.

“I’m not going to give up on it,” he said.

The third bay houses fall-bearing raspberries, which grow all spring and produce berries by Labor Day, Ten Eyck said. Last year, Indian Ladder Farms was picking raspberries all the way into the first week of November.

“It was a wonderful thing, and I’m going to open it to the public this year instead of picking, myself,” he said.

Next to the three tunnels, Ten Eyck planted 50 cherry trees on one acre. He is considering covering them with tunnels, also, because of two advantages.

Heavy rains just before picking can cause cherries to crack, he said.

“By having plastic over it, it isn’t going to happen,” he said.

Birds can also wreak havoc on a cherry crop.

“They just come out of nowhere and eat those sweet cherries,” Ten Eyck said.

“This never could have been done before because the cherries are too big,” he said. The root stocks he used for the trees should hold his trees at 10 feet high, instead of the usual 25 feet. Like many farmers using new innovations, Ten Eyck is seeing uncertain results.

“The ones under the tunnel are more robust” and growing taller than expected, he said.

“In some cases,” Bornt said, “crops grown in tunnels can be of higher quality than field-grown produce. We have several growers [in the region] who are growing herbs, spinach, and other greens all year long in high tunnels.”

Challenges

“The challenge of putting up one of these tunnels is they’re big,” Ten Eyck said. He recalled joking with his workers that they would either put up the tunnels, or gift-wrap the Voorheesville Mobil station.

“That’s a lot of plastic to put out,” he said. The covers are good for three or four years. “You can’t leave it up in winter because of the snow,” he said. He rolls his up so the UV light does not degrade the plastic.

“One thing you worry about is wind. You push the plastic up high, like a sail, so wind can get through,” he said. In rain, the plastic is pulled down.

The cost of the equipment, itself, is another challenge. Tunnels marketed to home or small commercial growers that are half the size of Ten Eyck’s cost thousands of dollars.

“There are lots and lots of high tunnel variations,” Bornt said. “Many of them could very easily be used by home gardeners, especially things like PVC pipe with floating row covers, which can make for very nice, cheap tunnels.”

Commercial tunnels, though, are a different story.

Ten Eyck said that he has an additional expense of $3,000 a year to pay for the tunnel over the three-year period. He said it’s a “close call” at this point.

The first year was spent setting up the tunnels. The second year, he had crops.

“This third year, we’re going to have to see where we go,” he said.

Ten Eyck was open about his operation.

“I just think it’s worthwhile for people to know where their food comes from,” he said.

“Those who have found a marketing niche, I think, are doing quite well with tunnels,” Bornt said. “One way I measure that is how many tunnels I see being built each year. When those already with a tunnel or two continue to build them, it tells me that money is being made.”

Bornt said that a video about the use of high tunnels was recently produced. Growers who wish to view it can contact the CCE.