12—Lancaster Fanning, Saturday, October 1,1977
4:
idea of 'howseplants'
is 675 greenhouse tomatoes
Her
By SUSAN KAUFFMAN
Feature Writer
Right now many housewives are
collecting cuttings and plants from outside
flower beds to bring them into their homes.
These ladies are storing up for long Winter
days when a pot of growing, and possibly
even flowering, plants will brighten home
and heart. Lucille Wenger, however, will
have plenty of plants to keep her busy
during this Winter - 675 to be exact. They
are not the typical assortment of
houseplants and they are not particularly
her own idea of a nice Wintertime hobby.
In actuality, Mrs. Wenger will be tending
hundreds of greenhouse-grown tomato
plants.
The reason Mrs. Wenger will be nur
turing these plants and another set just
like them after Christmas is due tocher
husband, Glenn’s, wish to have “a
diversion for his hours away from his
occupation,” as Mrs. Wenger explained it
Glenn is a chief area engineer at Arm
strong Cork Company in Lancaster and
has always enjoyed “toying” with some
project at his home in New Providence R 1
after working hours and on weekends.
Last year, the Wengers purchased a 24
by 100 foot sheet plastic and metal pipe
greenhouse kit, put i* together and grew
their first crop this past Sprmg They
planted at Christmas time in 1976 and
picked a good crop from late April through
the end of July. The crop growing now was
planted by seed on the Fourth of July and
will probably begin to bear ripe fruit early
in November
Glenn enjoys the challenge of regulating
growing conditions inside the greenhouse
by adjusting fertilizer, heat, water, and
insecticide applications. He also manages
the marketing of the produce. Cille
watches over the operation when Glenn is
at work, and takes care of much of the day
to-day handling of the plants
Lancaster Farming spoke to Mrs
Wenger recently to find out what happens
and what has to be done in order to nase
vine-ripened tomatoes in greenhouses
The greenhouse, itself, is a structure
built from an “expensive kit” as Cille
describes it. It is made with metal pipe
which supports two layers of heavy plastic
sheeting. A fan circulai.es air between the
two layers of plastic several inches apart
from each other in order to form an in
sulating barrier to the cold outside. Within
the greenhouse are five rows of growing
bins. These are actually double rows with
two rows of tomatoes to each bin. The bins
resemble shallow, long, narrow troughs
which run the length of the greenhouse.
After the plants sprout in jiffy-7 pots and
are transplanted mto five-inch peat pots,
the Wengers set them into the growing bins
16 inches apart down the rows. They place
plants alternately in the double rows so
that two plants are not growing directly
across from each other. Once the several
hundred plants are placed into the growing
medium m the bins, they must be provided
My Thoughts And welcome to ffcem
Even with vines only five or six feet tall,
the house looks full. An additional five feet
of vine per plant and large bunches of fruit
will make it the “jungle” Cille describes it
to be.
Getting these vines up the strings and
producing fruit, however, requires a daily
trip up and down the double rows twisting
the vines around the strings and shaking
the plants to cause the blossoms to
pollinate. Suckermg, pinching off extra
growth, is a continuous task as long as the
plants produce fruit.
Right now Cille spends “an hour or so” a
day in the greenhouse, as she explains it.
In November she will be spending more
hours each day pollinating and picking and
packmg the ripe fruit. After the first,
lower, cluster of tomatoes has been
picked, she has to let the strings down
gradually to allow for more vine growth
and setting more clusters at the top of the
vine During peak production, Cille will
spend over three hours a day in the
greenhouse
Mrs. Wenger said she picked as much as
410 pounds of tomatoes in a day last
Spring. She picks every day and places
them into cardboard produce cartons or
wooden cherry boxes. The Wengers then
store the tomatoes in the cellar of their
home. Glenn delivers the tomatoes, on his
way to work, to a local produce market on
Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Satur
day mornings.
Glenn Wenger also sees to it that the
proper nutrients, heat, and water are
available to the plants. Fertilizers and
trace elements are obtained through a
firm in Alabama which acts as consultants
to vegetable growers as well as
manufacturers of these greenhouses. The
chemicals are dissolved in water, 100 parts
water to one part fertilizer, and carried to
the root systems via a seep-hose system
which lies on top of the growing medium in
the bins.
By JOANNE SPAHR
Assistant Editor
with a string to grow upon. Rather than
stake the plants, the Wengers twist the
plants around strings which eventually
reach a height of 10 or 12 feet. The strings
are attached to individual tomato plants at
the bin surface and looped up over a wire
eight feet above the bin. An additional four
feet of string is looped over the wire to be
let down gradually after picking begins
and growing continues at the top of the
vine.
in order to eliminate unnecessary
foliage which robs nutrients otherwise put
into quality-sized fruit, these vines must be
suckered constantly. All the leaves on the
vine below the first cluster of tomatoes
must be pinched off. All growth between
the cluster stem and vme must be
removed, often several times because it
occasionally grows back. The resulting
plant is a sturdy, dark green vine perhaps
an mch m diameter, as much as 12 feet
high with few leaves and as many as 12
clusters of tomatoes.
“Get a horse," I grumbled to myself, slamming
down the hood of the car as an exclamation point.
Bullfeathers There I stood, on that chilly
September evening, watching the stream of red
tail lights flow past me as they left the fairgrounds
for home How come they were all getting free,
heading for a warm bed, while I, ace ag reporter,
was standing there, forlorn, at the mercy of Frank,
my police car It wasn't fair, I rationalized, I didn’t
deserve this cruel and indecent punishment.
"Rats on ya l ” I yelled out loud at all the lucky
ones packed cozily in their cars heading for home
In the smooth velvet sky, the stars twinkled at me
m mock laughter
“How have 1 gotten myself into this fix 7 ” 1 asked
again and again
It was all Dad’s fault, I concluded after about 20
mmures of mulling it over. If he hadn’t given up on
Watering requires much attention to
outside weather conditions as well as to
growth stages of the plants themselves and
the temperature and humidity within the
greenhouse. If the weather is overcast for
several days watermg is done sparsely;
conversely, if the weather is sunny and
Lucille Wenger and her son Blaine check for suckers on the half grown vines in
the greenhouse. This extra growth must be pinched off for best results with the
tomato plants.
hot, watering may be needed three times a
day. Cille says it is better to water a little
at a time and often rather than a lot only
once a day. The greenhouse is constructed
over a gravel floor rather than sealed
concrete and a special humidity control
door at one end assist in proper moisture
levels. Last Spring Mrs. Wenger said they
did not increase the water enough at one
point in growth to support the fourth or
fifth cluster of tomatoes so they fell off. As
a result, later in the season, she picked
only 35 pounds every other day rather than
150 pounds a day.
Heat is provided in the house by two
120,000 BTU LP gas furnaces which blow
warm air through collapsible plastic ducts
with air holes spaced throughout their 1
length. These heat ducts and the watering
me at the age of 15,1 might be heading home right
now
But, then, of course, it probably was a little
frustrating for Dad when, after explaining for the
sixth time how a spark plug worked, he looked
down at his darling, but slightly stupid, daughter
only to have her screw up her eyebrows, wrinkle
her nose, and grunt “Ha?”
So, there I was, at the mercy of Frank, the
pooped police car, without a single idea of what
makes a car "go”, except gas, of course
Through my muddled thoughts, I noticed the
sound of somebody pounding out the dented
fender of a nearby car. Although only his feet
showed from under the mass of metal, he looked
like a real mechanical genius to me, so I made a
beeline for the pounding sound.
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