March in North Carolina is the season of the greenhouse.  The threat of frost continues to threaten, and prevents most growers from going straight to ground with Spring crops.  However, with more hours of sunlight and daytime temperatures rising, many growers opt to start their season out in the greenhouse.  This is a great strategy to jumpstart seedlings before they go into the ground, or to even get a full round of crops like lettuces, herbs, or even tomatoes.

The controlled greenhouse environment can be difficult to setup, but once it’s humming it offers a variety of options to local growers that simply aren’t available outside.  One obvious benefit is in pest control and avoidance.  Insects can be a huge problem when growing lettuces outdoors, especially when temperatures increase.  In the greenhouse, however, these delicate crops can thrive without threat of pests, or the harsh effects of pesticides.  This is why lettuces and salad mixes tend to be among the first items available each Spring.    

Another less intuitive and more ingenious benefit of the greenhouse is the ability to control all inputs.   At Sunburst Tomato Company, Tim and Nancy Bass use a technique known as “tissue sampling” to monitor the nutrient levels of their crops.  This technique involves taking samples from the plants themselves, and checking a variety of nutrient levels, like a doctor would running tests on a patient.  The results let them know if any deficiencies exist, so that they can adjust their fertilization mixtures to compensate.  Much like people taking vitamins on the recommendation of their doctor, except the plants get much more frequent recommendations at a much higher level of precision!

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