- Hi, this is Amy Storey with Bright Agrotech
and I'm here with Haydn at Bayberry Fresh
and today, we're going to learn a little bit
about how Haydn runs his fertigation system
with cherry tomatoes.
(gentle guitar music)
- So, my fertigation system
that I use here on these tomatoes is a run-to-waste system
and, basically, it's really simple system.
We're basically just irrigating
with our water and fertilizer to meet the plants' needs
and then we're, whatever's excess is just running
out the bottom and it's run-to-waste
and we can either, you know, we can collect that waste
and put it somewhere else if we want to to take care of it
or, you know, just let it run off into the pasture,
that sort of thing.
And then, hydroponics in this type of setup,
compared to soil, we have much less evaporation.
If our greenhouse is,
if we're keeping the temperature right,
we might have a lot less evapotranspiration
that we're losing water.
We have, you know, we don't have the, we're not losing water
to deep percolation down into the soil.
We don't have run-off like if you were doing
flood irrigating or anything like that.
So really, it's a lot more confined and controlled.
So, if you look at the overall inputs versus outputs,
it's really a lot more efficient.
So, yeah, so the flow to waste compared to traditional soil,
benefits because you're gonna have, you know,
obviously a higher yield is more expensive,
but you should have a higher yield.
It gives you the ability to manage your nutrients
in your plant a little bit more closely.
You know, you can put your nutrients in your water
right to your root system.
You don't necessarily have as much evaporation or run-off
or, you know, loss to the soil, that sort of thing.
I mean, the flow to waste is just really simple
and it's cheap.
You don't have to have drainage channels.
You don't have to have collection tanks
and pumps to move it back up.
It keeps everything more simpler
because I only have one pump on a timer
and I don't have to worry
about all these other moving parts.
So, it keeps it simpler and less problematic.
You know, and it's also just cheaper, so.
(gentle guitar music)
So, as far as a system or equipment to do this,
you know, other than the greenhouse, obviously,
you know, it's really pretty easy and pretty simple.
You know, I have,
you gotta have some sort of trellising system
which, for me, is just posts and wire
and somewhat connected to the top of the greenhouse.
I have a irrigation system made out of just run-of-the-mill
poly parts from Home Depot or something like that.
You add regular three gallon nursery pots, you know,
filled with coconut coir and then tomahooks and clips
to hang 'em up which are really simple,
or cheap and easy to come by.
Every three to four days, I mix concentrate tanks
and then to mix up the fertilizer that it's gonna mix
in the main tanks and run through the irrigation.
Other than that, I pretty much,
I don't necessarily do anything specific,
unless I have a problem,
because anytime I'm in the greenhouse doing anything else,
I'm keeping, as I walk out the door,
I check out the monitor
and make sure there's nothing wrong.
I'm walking up and down the aisles.
So, while I'm doing other stuff,
I can be checking for drippers.
So, unless there's a problem,
I really don't have to do anything specific.
You know, if drippers are out, it's all simple,
just put the drippers back.
And, once in a while, if a pump burns out,
I'll replace the pump;
or, if you get a injection tube
or something clogged, to clean that stuff out,
but all that's pretty, doesn't happen very often.
So, for as far as media, I used sand my first year,
primarily because it was just kind of a side experiment
and it, sand is really cheap,
but it doesn't hold any water and it's,
you gotta irrigate a lot and it's a pain in the butt.
So, I'm using coconut coir, now,
because it is a little bit more sustainable.
It doesn't have the waste problems like rock wool does,
so you can get rid of it easier.
It also is a lot cheaper and it just works really well, too.
It's cheap, as far as a media goes,
as far as what you get you get out of it,
if that makes sense.
(gentle guitar music)
Yeah, so next year, I'm gonna keep doing
the same kind of system because I already have it in place
and, next year, I want to focus on more producing
and not be building a bunch of things for a year.
But, eventually, I'd like to switch over to a similar system
that has little bit fancier trellising, you know,
a gutter connect greenhouse
with, ah, ceiling trusses I can hook to
and have a slab or gutter systems to collect the run-off
a little bit more precisely and put it where I want to,
but, really, the same system because it works really well.
And, there again, even if you fix it up a little bit,
it's still really cheap and simple.
- [Interviewer] You know, if you were to give some farmers
advice on starting a system like this,
what sort of advice would you give?
- Keep it cheap and simple.
Use timers from Home Depot
and irrigation parts from Home Depot
and use stuff that's easily available and simple.
Don't get over-complicated and over-think it.
It's not, you know,
you can get really high tech and really complicated,
but you don't need to do that until you've really learned
how to just do a basic simple system really well.