How to maintain a reliable greenhouse operation

As greenhouse operations scale toward becoming bigger businesses, professionalism and reliability are the keys to success. Rather than focusing on the quantity of your yield, you should focus on creating a reliable operation that distributors and grocery stores can rely on for consistent produce.

Read on for our recommendations on how to maintain a reliable greenhouse operation.

Reliability requires safe production

Today people, seeds, plants, and fruits travel between countries in a matter of hours. With every item transferred, there is the risk of spreading diseases. If you’re not focused on safe production, you could be the cause of serious outbreaks that could affect food supply and harm consumers around the globe.

In order to be a reliable crop supplier, your greenhouse operation must practice safe production. This should be your number one priority to ensure a reliable, professional, and strategic operation.

There are many practices and protocols you can implement to support plant health and safety.

Crop cycles and interplanting

Crop cycles have a huge impact on safe production. Typical crop cycles for tomatoes may last a year including eight to nine weeks for growth and then 40 weeks of fruit production. However, shorter cycles often improve plant health for two main reasons:

• Younger plants are generally stronger and more disease-resistant than older plants, which are more sensitive and use more energy to sustain a long stem.
• You clean out your greenhouse more often between cycles, which removes possible contaminants.

The problem with shorter cycles is that your tomato plants still need eight to nine weeks before they bear fruit, so if you have shorter cycles, you have fewer weeks of fruit production. You can address this challenge by interplanting young plants with older plants.

Planting young plants in between older plants can help stop the spread of viruses through older, more susceptible plants because the young plants are resistant and can contain the virus. Even when exposed to the virus, younger plants can still grow strong and may block further spreading.

Interplanting also addresses the eight to nine week growth period by ensuring there are fruit producing plants all year round.

Hygiene control

Every greenhouse should have specific hygiene control protocols. Good protocols can ensure that viruses are caught early and treated with minimal damage. Here are a few protocols that you should use in your greenhouse.

1. Designate equipment for specific plants: Each plant, row, or crop should have its own equipment. This equipment is only used on the designated plants and never touches other plants.
2. Disinfect tools: Anything that touches your plants should be disinfected regularly. This includes the tools, trolleys, and even the hands of your workers.
3. Work in the same direction: Always work in the same direction within your greenhouse. It may seem monotonous, but this ensures that if there is a disease, it will be easier to track the direction it will spread.
4. Give employees clothing coverups: All workers should cover their clothes with designated coverups that stay in the greenhouse.
5. Avoid bringing anything inside: Don’t bring anything from outside into the greenhouse, including boxes for harvesting. If something needs to be brought in, disinfect it first.
6. Minimize compartment size: Smaller compartment sizes reduce the possibility for viruses to spread.
7. Instruct workers: Your workers should know all the protocols, as well as how to detect diseased plants and what to do if they find one. It is also important to ensure your workers feel motivated and invested in protecting plants. See our previous blog post on this subject to learn more

Resilient crops

Even with hygiene control protocols, sometimes disease is unavoidable. All it takes is one infected plant for the disease to start spreading. This is why reliable farming also requires creating resilient crops. Resilient crops may be better able to survive viruses or even resist infection. Here are several tips for creating resilient crops.

1. Grafting: Grafting makes plants stronger, more resilient, and disease-resistant because the plants benefit from multiple plants’ immunities. Grafted plants also benefit from better nutrient intake and have stronger rootstock.
2. Fertilization: Ensuring plants have the right nutrients, including enough calcium, can make them healthier and better able to withstand infection.
3. Avoid long crop cycles: Crop cycles should only be as long as necessary. Longer cycles create longer stems, which take a lot more energy for plants to sustain and have more surface area that is susceptible to infection.
4. Screen radiation: Too much radiation can cause plants stress. Using screens to reduce radiation can create a better environment for plants to thrive in.

Continuous growth

Implementing these protocols and practices can ensure that your greenhouse reliably produces crops. These protocols may not lead to the highest production every season, but when you focus on plant condition and continuous growth, your production is sure to remain steady over the long term, which is exactly what your customers are looking for.

Short term profit is not the long term interest of a reliable greenhouse operation. Sometimes a small shift in mindset can have a huge difference on your entire operation.