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K-State Ag Today: Tunnel vision

Story by Jeff Wichman

11:30 a.m. Monday, July 21, 2008

As food demand increases, how can fruit and vegetable producers do more with the land they have?

K-State Research and Extension vegetable crop specialist Ted Carey has spent several years researching high tunnels, inexpensive, low maintenance, un-powered structures that offer many of the benefits of a greenhouse, at a fraction of the cost.

"By putting a little piece of plastic over our fields, we actually transfer a favored production environment to Kansas. And so this gives us a great deal of benefit in terms of season extension, so we can get early tomatoes, and not only that, we can -- we get protection against environmental extremes: Hail, pretty high winds, rain, all sorts of things," Carey said. "This environment really provides a great deal of protection that results in higher yields and better quality."

In addition recreating favorable growing conditions, Carey says season extension may be the tunnel's biggest benefit.

"Typically, in high tunnels, producers are planting the middle of March. They can actually, they can close them up, they can put some row cover over the tomatoes, and so as a result they get to the market with tomatoes, sometime in June," he said. "And another thing is that people can use them actually to grow spinach all winter long."