Tandy Crabtree was a golf course superintendent for 20-plus years in central Missouri before the struggling economy prompted a career change in 2013. As it happened, his past and his present collided to make hydroponic growing the right move.

“My education is in biology and chemistry, and I followed that with working for Mississippi State University in their agriculture nutrition lab,” he says. After his time at MSU, he worked on golf courses for years, but when the industry dipped, the only opportunites required moving away from Missouri. Additionally, the Crabtree family wanted to eat natural foods grown with fewer pesticides and knew they were not only ones.

Along with his wife, Tracy, and his daughters, Rachel and Preston, Tandy set out to open an outfit in his current home of Montreal, Mo. to supply the local schools with fresh produce. Like his family, the schools in his area were trying to serve more of these healthy foods.

There was only one problem: Fresh produce isn’t always available year-round, and Crabtree knows the reason why.

“The reason that this country has the school year calendar that it does is that farms were raised with family labor,” he says. “In the time the farms were growing, the kids were at home tending them. If they weren’t tending, they were at school. Our calendar hasn’t changed that much. There’s not much growing when schools are in session.”

As a result, Tandy decided to open a year-round, controlled environment growing operation that would allow him to offer something no one else in the area was able to. Construction began in 2013 and the first crop was planted in the fall of 2013. Today, buttery Bibb lettuce is their main crop, but Crabtree Farms grows lettuces across the color spectrum.

“I knew the controlled environment was the way to go so I could work my way into year-round growth [and] get fresh produce into the school systems,” he says. “[As for lettuce], I felt I could get a premium product at a slightly lower price.”

Crabtree Farms uses Nutrient Film Technique, a hydroponic system known as NFT for short. The plants start in a nursery and are seeded in Rockwool cubes. After a two-week period, the plants are transferred to food-grade PVC grow channels where nutrient-rich water is fed over the roots in a recirculating system. The plants remain there for four weeks to mature. The end result is a product Tandy says his buyers love because they know where it comes from and because it’s clean.

By selling to schools, Tandy says that Crabtree Farms can offer something that other, bigger hydroponics outfits can’t. Because he is serving a specific community and isn’t filling large orders for supermarket chains, he can grow for the school’s needs and it make it easy for them to get fresh produce. This strategy has also allowed him to expand into neighborinng school districts like Springfield, Mo. He also is a member of a local food hub that sees local growers share equipment and operate out of a shared commercial kitchen.

“[The schools] have to decide, from one year to the next, what they are going to purchase,” he says. “Even if they want local produce, they don’t know what the market is going to be. You don’t know what prices are going to be or what’s exactly going to be available. With the controlled environment, it’s much easier to give them a set price. It has a much longer shelf life and there’s consistency.”

Plotting a future

Crabtree Farms also has received a grant from the Missouri Agricultural Small Business Development Authority’s Feasibility study to look at expanding their market to include chopped and bagged lettuce for smaller school systems that do not have the labor necessary to prepare the lettuce themselves. This grant allows them to apply for other working capital grants that Tandy hopes will allow him to his open a commercial kitchen in the future.

Even with his eyes on growth, Tandy and his family know where they came from. As they expand and look the future of their business, they try to stay true to what got them to this point. At the start, he started small to, as he says it, "get his feet wet" and avoid taking on too much overhead. He and his wife put their first house up for sale to fund the operation and built a new home. Despite his background in horticulture, Tandy took his time to get to this point.

“You gain experience by making mistakes. I think the mistakes are behind me and I’ve got good, consistent crops now,” Tandy says. “Lenders know that there’s a market within the state now. That’s only going to more of an advantage when I start to make my expansions.”

Janelle Patterson contributed to this article.

An essential part of the growing process is pollination, as it directly leads to the formation of fruit that can be sold at stores and markets. Without pollination — the transfer of pollen from the stamens to the pistil on a flower — growers wouldn’t have any produce to sell.

There are also a number of ways for plants to be pollinated. One option is for growers to transfer pollen from one crop to another by hand by using methods like gently shaking the plant to move pollen or using a small paint brush to transfer pollen between several blossoms. But those methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive. Animals such as bumblebees, hummingbirds, moths and butterflies can all pollinate plants, although not always in all environments.

Amongst pollinators, though, bumblebees are one of the most effective, and can be used in a greenhouse. They also are easy to control and manage for growers. And when compared to hand pollinating, relying on bees takes less time and is more cost effective in regard to labor costs.

Bee basics

According to information on pollination from Koppert Biological Systems published on their website, bumblebees can visit twice as many flowers per minute compared to other bees and can carry heavier loads of pollen over longer distances. Additionally, their large size compared to other bee species allows them to make better contact with the stamens and pistils than their smaller counterparts. And perhaps most importantly, bumblebees thrive in a variety of conditions, as they can work in temperatures as low as 10°C, in strong winds, light rain and in low light intensity levels.

Most bee species are also capable of pollinating a variety of crops, including tomato, eggplant and strawberry. When that happens, it can directly lead to larger yields.

“Lots of the time, when bees pollinate multiples sources, it will make the fruit develop larger,” says Dr. Vera Krischik, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota.

Greenhouse growers don’t have a wide variety of species to pick from, and bringing in native bees from the outside isn’t an option. For most options, bumblebees standout as better than most because they showcase the vibrating behavior (more commonly referring to as “buzz pollination”) that is necessary to pollinate crops like tomato and eggplant.

When bumblebees latch onto plants to pollinate, their jaws move hundreds of times each second. As a result, they have to hold on or else be pushed away.

“[Buzzing pollination] sounds like a bee is giving you a raspberry,” said Dr. Stephen Buchmann, a professor at the University of Arizona, in a 2013 New York Times article. “The bees are turning themselves into living tuning forks.”

Growing specifications

Hives should be placed in protective boxes that are ¾ of the way filled with bumblebees and evenly spaced out in a greenhouse with the hive sitting a few feet above the ground. A checkerboard pattern is a common and effective method for spacing out the units. If placing hives amongst plants isn’t an option, the best alternative placement method is to space the units evenly along the perimeter of the crop. The number of units needed depends on the size of a grower’s yield and it’s best to do research ahead of time before committing to bumblebees as a pollinator. For reference, a small hive of 45 to 60 workers that covers up to 5,000 square feet typically costs around $160, per Koppert. Hiring a beekeeper also isn’t a necessary cost for most operations, as the bees will seek out flowers on their own when placed properly, and bumblebees won’t produce honey.

Unlike outdoor hives that can last survive over the course of a few years, greenhouse bee hives typically last between 10 to 12 weeks, although some will expire after 6 to 8 weeks. As a result, there is an added cost and other species — namely honeybees — live longer in greenhouses on average. But bumblebees stand apart from the rest because they are more potent pollinators than other options. Most notably, honeybees cannot buzz pollinate, making them less effective with certain crops commonly grown in greenhouses.

To use tomatoes as an example, a bee pollinates the plant’s flower by biting it and making it vibrate. Within four hours, the bite mark turns brown. That single bite typically results in the transfer of enough pollen for the flower to be pollinated and setting to occur.

Basic safety

In addition to knowing where to place the boxes with the bumblebee hives, it is also important to know how to be safe around bees. According to Koppert, only worker bumblebees and queens have stingers, and the stinger is a weapon for defense. When you get stung by a bee, a small amount of venom is injected into your body. That venom causes you to feel a short, but severe, pain that swiftly fades away. In roughly 1 percent of all cases, an allergic reaction to bee venom occurs.

The good news, however, is that bumblebees rarely sting, and risk can be reduced by avoiding any actions that may provoke them. When working around bees, be calm, don’t wave your arms at them or grab ahold of the hive. Bumblebees can react aggressively to odors such as alcohol, perspiration and perfumes, so you may want to create guidelines for laborers about wearing perfume or used scented lotions while working in the greenhouse. They are also attracted to the color blue and can be aggravated by the oxidized materials in rings, bracelets and watches. If and when you need to visit the hive’s box to close it ahead of a scheduled chemical application, it is best to do so early in the morning prior to sunrise when the hive is least active.

The risks, however, are minimal and protective clothing is readily available. Bumblebees also don’t die after stinging a person, which isn’t the case with honeybees and other species, but it’s better to avoid causing them to feel threatened.

Everything considered, bumblebees are an effective, trustworthy pollinator. For more information, check out “Pollination powerhouses” (bit.ly/29YfGQH) from the August 2015 issue of Produce Grower.

Whether or not people are actually eating better these days is certainly a debatable topic. But from a marketing and shopping perspective, the “healthification” of our food and how we eat is in full force. If you grow herbs and edibles, chances are you’ve seen a healthy (no pun intended) boost in sales of both over the past few years. When it comes to herbs, customers are looking for fresh, organic and local options at the grocery store and unusual varieties at the garden center for their home gardens. These trends spell opportunity for growers investing in culinary herb plant production.

Rain or shine

Despite sunny profit forecasts for edibles, weather has had an impact on sales to independent garden centers (IGCs) for some growers, including Nortex Wholesale Nursery in Texas. Nortex, the grower of Blue Label Herbs, faults intense rain and flooding the last two springs as the cause of “sideways” sales of herbs to local garden centers since 2014. While IGCs have traditionally been reliable customers for Blue Label Herbs, the weather pressure has exposed some growth opportunities with alternative customer groups. According to Nortex’s vice president, Aaron Pinkus, stormy weather hasn’t put a damper on sales to grocery stores. In fact, their sales to grocery stores have grown significantly. In an industry so impacted by changing Mother Nature, finding new weatherproof sales channels can be a boon.

What’s behind the growing success of grocery store herb sales? One major factor, says Pinkus, is relevancy marketing. “I believe the social media foodie culture is a large proponent of the continued success of herbs in the grocery stores, and I expect to see new and innovative products from Blue Label Herbs in the near future,” he says.

Keep it clean

How you grow your herbs is quickly becoming as important as which herbs you grow. Consumers are getting more focused on avoiding chemicals in their foods and paying attention to organic labeling. With new pesticide bans taking center stage in the media, your retail customers may face pressure from their customers to provide chemical-free edibles.

Going organic and achieving their USDA Certified Organic status has also had a significant positive impact on sales of Blue Label Herbs. Nortex has seen a “big” uptick in demand for its organic herb plants, especially from grocery stores and their customers.

When it comes to production challenges, Pinkus hasn’t run into too many with growing all of Nortex’s herbs organically. Since becoming certified, their production success has depended on adhering to a “very strict” beneficial insect pest control program. Pinkus notes that monitoring soil conditions closely is also a must. With a keen focus on those two factors, they’ve found their stride and don’t anticipate many future production challenges.

Keep it clear

Customers today don’t just expect your marketing to be relevant to their lifestyle and emotions — they expect you to be transparent and authentic. In addition to adopting cleaner methods for growing your herbs, you’ll also need to commit to communicating the story of how you grow them. Being upfront and honest about what inputs you’re using on your plants is key, whether the crops are for human consumption or for pollinator and wildlife support. That means you have to be much more strategic about how you use your packaging and labeling; they aren’t just for shipping or identification anymore, they also provide the customer with education and an insurance policy.

Shake it up

Changing palettes are another driving factor behind growing herb sales. As customers embrace more ethnic foods and new flavors, they’re willing to try more adventurous or unusual seasonings. So while basic favorites such as basil, cilantro, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme still dominate herb sales, kitchen adventure seekers also want to add something more unique to their plates.

Adding variety and unusual herbs to the Blue Label Herbs line is yet another strategy that’s helped Nortex expand their grocery store sales. “Home cooks seem to enjoy experimenting with the many different varieties they never knew were available,” says Pinkus.

Fine tune your selection

American customers are also becoming more familiar with fines herbes, which are combinations of specific herbs essential to fine French cooking. The pinnacle of fines herbes is the combination of parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil. While chervil hasn’t traditionally been as popular as the other basic herbs in the combination, its familiarity is growing and you should consider adding it to your mix. In fact, why not offer this combination of fines herbes as a package deal to your customers? It would be a great marketing tool for both grocery store and garden center customers.

Many gardeners struggle with growing traditional celery, but have a much easier time with cutting celery. Consider offering up this variety in your selection as an alternative. Same goes for Lovage — most customers simply don’t know what to do with it. Lavender is hugely popular right now as a flavoring in all sorts of recipes. Salad burnet gives salads a unique flavor bump, and Shiso is hot on the tails of basil.

Reboot

Even the basics are getting upgrades. Basil isn’t just basil anymore. Customers want Thai, citrus and cinnamon-flavored basil varieties, as well as purple and red-colored plants. Dill is en vogue again, specifically for its use in fermentations and pickles. One really can’t have enough dill for such endeavors. Borage blooms are showing up all over the place, from salads to cocktails. The fact that it’s a great garden ornamental makes it easy to market as a dual purpose foodscape plant.

#GrowYourOwn

Who’s buying the herbs these days and how will they influence your bottom line in the future? That’s an interesting question. While older customers, who are likely to be more experienced cooks, are probably still your best customer for herb plants and fresh herbs in the produce aisle and may be driving the boost in sales at grocery stores, very soon you’ll have no choice but to rely on the upcoming generations’ buying potential. This situation offers up a double-edged sword: There are a lot of Millennials and they will offer a lot of buying power, but in general they’re not doing a lot of cooking. With home economics offerings dwindling in schools in recent years, many young people haven’t been exposed to cooking classes.

Many younger consumers are more likely to turn to the take out menu than to pick up a skillet.

Fresh moves

Perhaps it’s that very feeling of independence-inadequacy that’s driving the growing interest in modern homesteading, or self-reliance. Growing one’s own food and herbs, canning, pickling, fermenting and herbal infusions couldn’t be hotter. Consumers are desperately reaching for that feeling of control. Tap into that emotion with your herb and edibles marketing, and you’ll most likely hit nerves and wallets.

While there may be some real culinary learning-curve challenges facing younger consumers, Pinkus feels that ultimately their values will spell blue skies for Blue Label Herb sales. “The whole fresh and healthy food movement is driven by a generation that is likely to sustain their ideals for decades,” he says. Ultimately, it’s our job in the green industry to help them feel confident using our products so they have success and come back for more.

The whole fresh and healthy food movement is driven by a generation that is likely to sustain their ideals for decades. - Aaron Pinkus, vice president at Nortex Wholesale Nursery

New markets

It’s a logical conclusion that if the up-and-coming customer base is paying for other people to cook for them, that restaurants are still a growing customer base for herb plants and fresh cut herbs. And that’s been just the case for many fresh herb growers. But, many restaurants have picked up on the hyper-local growing movement and are bringing their fresh herb production in-house with their own gardens.

So where do growers turn next? Many consumers are now turning to “recipe box” services to try to wean themselves off of restaurant fare and develop some basic cooking skills. These deconstructed meal-to-door services are popping up everywhere and could be a great new marketplace for growers offering fresh-cut herbs. Once these consumers get a taste for certain herbs included in their recipes, they could be persuaded to want to learn how to grow such herbs at home, be it in an indoor or outdoor garden.

Leslie (CPH) owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, marketing strategy, digital content creation, branding design, advertising and social media support for green industry companies. lesliehalleck.com

One of the most important aspects of hydroponic food crop production is light. There are several reasons for this. Light impacts plant growth and development in several different ways. There are three different aspects of light that should be considered: 1) light quantity, 2) light quality and 3) duration of light or day length. All three of these characteristics of light affect growth and development of food crops, though in different ways and in varying magnitudes.

Light quantity

For hydroponic food crop production, the quantity of light can dramatically affect the yield of fruiting and leafy crops. Light quantity can refer to the instantaneous quantity of light, light intensity or the cumulative amount of light — the daily light integral (DLI). Light intensity drives photosynthesis which, in turn, produces the carbohydrates which serve as the building blocks for plant growth. Since the majority of food crops are sold on a per-unit-weight basis, it is advantageous to increase plant growth as it results in increased yields.

While light intensity is important, DLI is another effective means of monitoring photosynthetic light in the greenhouse. Light intensity is a snapshot in time; throughout the course of the day in greenhouses, it can change with the time of day, position of the sun in the sky and cloud cover. Therefore, the cumulative amount of photosynthetic light a crop receives during the day can be a more meaningful way to measure and manage light in greenhouses. Many food crops grown hydroponically may be considered high-light plants, with growth increasing with light.

One of the big advantages to greenhouse hydroponic production is that these facilities can produce crops during the winter in temperate climates, where outdoor production is not possible. However, ambient DLIs during the winter are usually low and sub-optimal. The only way to appreciably increase the light intensity or DLI inside the greenhouse above ambient light levels is to use supplemental lighting.

This has traditionally been accomplished by using high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps (Fig. 1). Some of the advantages of HPS lamps include their broad spectrum and ability to illuminate large areas in greenhouses. However, HPS lamps are ~25% efficient in converting electrical energy into light for plants, with some energy turning into heat. Additionally, HPS have a lifetime of around 20,000 luminous hours.

Recently, the development of high-intensity light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has resulted in new lighting technology for food crop producers. Some of the benefits of LEDs include the ability to tailor light quality (more on this in the next section), up to ~50% efficiency in converting energy into light with some wavelengths, and an expected luminous life of 50,000+ hours. While the energy consumption of LEDs can be a big boon for those looking to minimize energy expenditures, LED light does not scatter like HPS light, meaning more lamps may be required to light your growing area. Additionally, the up-front cost for LEDs may turn off some growers.

If you are producing hydroponic food crops, start measuring your light intensity or DLI. You may be surprised that, while the greenhouse may seem well-lit enough for you, it is below the levels that would boost crop productivity. Give serious consideration to using supplemental lighting for your greenhouse food crop production, especially if you are in more northerly latitudes. Investments in supplemental lighting, while not trivial, may pay off with increased yields and revenue from increased crop productivity.

Light quality

Another factor of light that should be considered for hydroponically producing food crops is light quality. Light quality refers to the wavelength or “color” of light. Different light spectra can have different effects on plant growth and development. Light between the wavelengths of 400 and 700 nanometers is referred to as photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). This light is the most useful for photosynthesis and, as a result, is important when evaluating supplemental lighting in your greenhouse.

In addition to affecting photosynthesis and therefore, growth, different spectra can affect the development of hydroponic crops. The effects of different spectra are numerous. However, red, far-red and blue light have the most pronounced effect on plants. Red and far-red light, and their abundance relative to one another, affect stem length, flowering and leaf expansion.

Stem elongation is enhanced when the proportion of far-red to red light increases. Far-red-rich environments promote stem and internode elongation. In ornamental plant production, stem elongation is undesirable because it can diminish the aesthetic quality of containerized plants. For hydroponically grown crops, stem length is generally not important.

One exception is for seedlings intended for grafting. Some greenhouse vine crops, including tomatoes and cucumbers, use seedlings that are grafted onto rootstocks that increase productivity. Grafting small seedlings can be a challenge. However, increasing far-red light during seedling growth can increase stem elongation and make handling seedlings and grafting more accessible.

Blue light also can affect plant appearances, including leaf size and leaf color. Many LED arrays include blue light in proportions of 0% up to ~30% relative to other wavelengths. Blue light can inhibit leaf expansion and reduce the amount of leaf area able to capture light and photosynthesize. Blue light is generally beneficial for plant growth, but excessive levels may result in excessively compact seedlings. Additionally, blue light enhances anthocyanin production, which is the reddish-purple pigment found in leaves. In the winter, when light levels are low, red-leafed plants such as red lettuce and purple basil may have diminished coloration and appear greener. Increasing blue light intensities can help increase anthocyanin and produce more marketable crops (Fig. 2).

Day length

In addition to light quality and quantity, the length of the day (photoperiod) can affect the development of some crops. Most importantly, photoperiod can affect flowering. For greenhouse floriculture crop production, managing photoperiod is very common. For instance, poinsettias, chrysanthemums and kalanchoe all initiate flowers under short days and may be classified as short-day plants, whereas many spring annuals and perennials flower under long days and may be classified as long-day plants.

For many greenhouse food crops, it is not necessary to control flowering using day length. For vine crops in which flowers must be produced in order for fruit to develop (tomatoes, peppers or cucumbers, for example), flower formation is not affected by day length and plants produce flowers regardless of the photoperiod. Lettuce and some culinary herbs are induced to flower under long days. Though flowering of these leafy crops is undesirable, the relatively short crop time for leafy greens and herbs is short and plants are harvested prior to flowering. Therefore, measures to inhibit flowering are usually not needed.

One exception to this is strawberries. Strawberry cultivars are generally classified as ‘June-bearing’ or ‘ever-bearing.’ June-bearing cultivars are short-day plants and flowers are formed under short days. Ever-bearing cultivars are classified as facultative long-day plants and, though flowers may be formed under any photoperiod, more flowers are formed under long days (Fig. 3).

Take-home message

Light can have a large impact on the productivity of your hydroponically grown food crops depending on your location, greenhouse structure and time of year. However, the effects of light are not limited to photosynthesis and growth alone. Different wavelengths of light can elicit specific responses that hydroponic crop producers can take advantage of, while day length can control flowering and subsequent fruit production. Take some time to review how you can start managing light to improve productivity and quality.

Christopher is an assistant professor of horticulture in the Department of Horticulture at Iowa State University. ccurrey@iastate.edu