SPECIALTY CROPS S
What does irrigation look like with this new and growing trend in specialty crop production?
ubstrate growing is a term you hear a lot these days, but what does growing in substrate actually mean? Your science book would describe substrate as the surface or material from which an organism lives, grows
or obtains nourishment.
For large production agriculture, we typically think of the soil as the substrate. While this isn’t technically incorrect, substrate growing is actually referencing the growing of plants in an alternate media usually made up of a mixture of coco coir and peat moss, rockwool, etc. This is becoming an emerging practice for several crops including raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, cannabis and more.
The future of substrate growing is hitting the fresh berry market hot and heavy. Imagine driving past 100-acre fields covered with the familiar plastic hoop houses, but inside are tidy little lines of 7-, 10-and 30-liter pots growing all your favorite caneberries. Or, these covered fields could house giant, juicy strawberries hanging perfectly from 3 feet in the air. Called “tabletop strawberries,” these strawberries are grown on narrow tables at a high density inside a hoop house. This is a stark difference from the traditional strawberry production consisting of a variety of bed sizes wrapped in black plastic mulch with hardworking pickers bent over for hours harvesting and hand packing strawberries into the clamshells consumers buy at the store.
ALTHOUGH THIS TYPE OF PRODUCTION OFFERS NUMEROUS POSITIVES, THERE IS A SUBSTANTIAL INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDED.
There are several reasons why this type of growing practice is gaining interest, such as increasing labor costs, lack of labor availability, stricter regulations, land availability, etc. This is nothing new for other countries; however, it is a new adoption in the United States and is likely to continue to increase rapidly.
SUBSTRATE IN PRODUCTION
What does this look like in production? For most people, the first thing that comes to mind is greenhouses. Large greenhouses growing in a substrate media are not particularly new in our industry. These could include hot house tomatoes grown vertically in a rockwool substrate or a cannabis facility filled at a high density with 4-liter pots.
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Berries grown in substrate are elevated off the soil where they have less chance of bruising or mold growth from laying against the mulch plastic. The pickers are now able to stand up to harvest and pack berries, which leads to increased harvest productivity. Since nothing is being grown in the soil there is no need for fumigating between growing cycles, no ground prep to create beds, no plastic mulch to pull/recycle/reinstall, and no drip tape to recycle and purchase again.
Although this type of production offers numerous positives, there is a substantial investment in infrastructure needed. The tables for growing are specialized equipment and must be supported by a steel post approximately every 10 feet, and each hoop house contains four to six
Spring 2021 | Irrigation TODAY 21
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