120 animal, vegetable, miracleHer second greenhouse is heated, she said, but only in spring. As we
approached that one, I peered in the door and actually gasped. Holy to-
mato. I’ve never seen healthier, more content- looking plants: ten feet tall,
leafy, rising toward heaven on strings stretched from the ground to the
rafters. If there were an Angel Choir of tomatoes, these would be singing.
The breed she grows is one meant especially for greenhouses, a variety
(perfectly enough) called Trust.
Amy was inspiring to watch, a knowledgeable farmer in her element as
she narrowed her eyes for signs of pests, pausing to finger a leaf and study
its color. We walked among the tall plants admiring the clusters of fruits
hanging from bottom to top in a color gradient from mature red fruits be-
low to the new, greenish white ones overhead. The support strings were
rolled around spindles up above that could be cranked to lower the plant
down gradually, as the top continues to climb. Tomato plants habitually
lose their lower leaves as they grow; the point of this system is to coil the
leafless stems on the ground and let the healthy growing part keep twin-
ing upward. But these plants were so healthy they refused to lose any
lower leaves. Lily played hide- and-seek in the tomato wilderness while
Amy showed me her growing system.
She fi ne- tunes it a little more each year, but already her operation is an
obvious success. The last time she had soil tests, the technicians who
came to evaluate her compost- built organic dirt had never seen such high
nutrient values. The greatest limitation here is temperature; she could
keep tomatoes growing all winter, but the cost of fuel would pass her profi t
margin. In early spring, when she’s starting the plants, she economizes by
heating the soil under the seedlings (woodstove- heated water runs
through underground pipes) while letting air temperatures drop fairly low.
Pushing the season early is more important than late, she says. People will
pay more for a June tomato than one in October, when tomatoes are old
hat, dropping off the vines in gardens everywhere. By starting in the
spring, she can bring bushels of Trust out of her greenhouse to thrilled
customers long before anything red is coming out of local gardens.
I observed that in the first week of June, she could charge anything
she wanted for these. She laughed. “I could. But I don’t. I belong to this
community, people know me. I wouldn’t want to take advantage.”