The roots stay in place, old stem is laid down after it stops producing and the producing end stays upright. So the producing parts move away from the roots around in a line trained up a string. It’s L shaped with the old stem laying on the ground. So that would take some kind of moveable trellis.
Or maybe they have another way. But 30ft of stem can’t grow straight up for 11 months. The producing part will be upright and within reach of harvest crews anyway it’s done.
With lighting in place they may crop all yr. And the most efficient way it would seem would be to start 1/52 of the production area with new crop every week. That way there would always be work for every phase. But maybe they start them all at once.
In Texas the tomatoes were started in August, produced thru June, and pulled out in July. In northern areas it would make sense to start the crop in January and produce into December.
They have been harvesting beefsteak tomatoes in the other greenhouse for a little while, for how long I don’t know. I assume they were planted late last year. I don’t know when our side will start harvesting.
I would like to go over to the other GH and see how they are doing that part of the operation, when I have a chance. We had one day of off site orientation, and the next day we were in the greenhouse already doing some of our first tasks.
They have many hives of bumblebees in the greenhouse. Why they use them and not honeybees, I don’t know. Maybe they’re more efficient at pollinating tomatoes. I had thought they were pretty much self pollinating plants, but maybe the bees help the process along.
I’ve had a few close-up encounters with the bees, but they pretty much leave you alone.
Honeybees are very unhappy in a greenhouse. They navigate using the sun and get confused when confined. I’ve used a small hive of bumblebees to pollinate my greenhouse fruit. The class C hive lasts about 5 weeks. Class A and B hives last longer. The other way to pollinate is using a small handheld vibrator. That would be a boring job.
In my greenhouse at 1700 sf one small hive is more that enough. I’ve resorted to killing some of the 50 or so bees in a small hive. That’s to avoid over working the bloom. Bumblebees collect pollen by vibrating the flower. After many visits the flower looks pretty beat up.
The males have stung me a few times mostly when I was hunting them down. They tend to bounce of the roof and are smaller than the females. Their job isn’t to collect lots of pollen it’s to fly off and pollinate another female.
I suppose that their hive has some kind of sugar solution for food? If they collect the pollen, what is it used for? Do they make some kind of honey or something else?
I saw the name of the bees on the hive boxes but forget what they were.
Anyone how bought at $10 before it went public did very well since the stock is now $30. Now at $30 it looks like a big gamble. I don’t think of food production as a high growth or high profit business. They are planning to open 12 greenhouses but that will take years and plenty of money.
Nice that they are creating jobs and hopefully producing produce more efficiently.
They collect pollen to raise the brood in the hive. Even on the class C hive there are young born after a couple of weeks. The bigger hives have more brood and over a longer period.
There is a bag full of sugar water in the hive. Maybe a pint in the class C.
Articles on the interwebs say that similar to honeybees and other true “bees”, male bumbles can’t sting. Only the queen and workers can. Supposedly they can sting repeatedly (smooth stinger) unlike the barbed honeybee stinger. Just FYI…
I likely don’t know the males from workers. The big ones are I think queens with brood.
Me neither. Seems crazy that growing and selling quality food on a large scale could not be a very profitable business.
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Starting 3rd week. Seem to be getting used to the hours and walking. Lots of repetetive motion to deal with so having to switch hands for certain chores. Time changes next week, so that figures now that I’m getting used to getting up early…
You got a tan in the greenhouse? What is the glazing made of? Acrylic?
I got a little bit of a tan my first week on my neck/upper back, not much since then. But today I’ve been on an elevated trolley, so I’m higher up, so I might get a bit more sun today.
I’m not sure what the roof is made of. I’ll ask around.
Glad to hear you are hanging in there. It sounds like quite the production there.
Thanks. Today I worked from the lift trolley today, so didn’t have to do much walking, which was good. Was waist deep in tomato plants today, my sleeves have greasy green tomato leaf stains on them. It was like wading thru a green jungle…
Starting my 8th week in the greenhouse, hard to believe. I’ve been picking tomatoes the last 3 weeks, think it’s the easiest job of all the tasks I’ve done. Some days it’s very warm and humid in there, so it gets uncomfortable sometimes. We get to bring home as many 'maters as we want on Thursday’s, so that’s a plus.
Nothing like a 'matrer sandwich! Is the taste close to homegrown?
They’re not bad, we had a couple last night sliced up for supper, I had them with air fried drumsticks, fried taters and a biscuit. We had some of the maters from our greenhouse, they seem to taste better than the beefsteaks from the other GH. Who knows, we might’ve had some that I picked. They are smaller than the beefsteak, about baseball sized.
I got out my hoard of tomato seeds last night, going to have to whittle down to a “reasonable” number of varieties that I’m going to try in our garden this year. Got to get my plots plowed and tilled when it dries out enough, which is a long wait this time of year.
Update on this thread, as I haven’t posted in a while. I’m nearing one year with AppHarvest (Feb 22nd), hard to believe I’m still there.
It’s been a lot of hard work, in various working conditions. Last spring and summer were a tough go, as the temps and humidity could become nigh unbearable. They monitored the heat index, and if it exceeded 125F, work was stopped, sometimes we were sent home as it became unsafe, this happened 3 times from what I remember. When it wasn’t quite that hot, we were told to take hydration breaks.
Our first growing season ended in mid summer, and after a thorough tear down and clean up, we replanted in late summer. We are now harvesting a new crop, and are shipping out lots of tomatoes.
Now that it’s winter, the working conditions are much more tolerable, but it still can get a bit stuffy, especially when it’s really cold outside, but sunny, as it seems to accentuate the humid environment inside the greenhouse. I’ve missed a few days because of snow/ice which has made my 30 mile commute unsafe. We don’t get in trouble for not going in on bad weather days, just don’t get paid.
The job I had last season was harvester, but this one, I’ve been doing crop care work. This means I’m on a trolley, which rides on rails between the rows of plants. My chores vary, between suckering, pruning and other tasks.
It’s less walking, obviously, than harvesting was, but a lot more repetitive work with my hands. But, they aren’t the body parts that hurt the most, it’s usually my back, and ribs/chest because of the constant reaching to get to each plant (thousands of them a day). Needless to say, I’ve made use of quite a bit of Advil…
There’s been many mornings, when the alarm goes off that I say, I can’t take this another day, but somehow get up anyways, and go in anyways. Maybe it’s because I’m one of the oldest employees (I imagine I’m twice as old as most of the workforce), and I’m trying to prove something. Or I’m some kind of masochist.
As I posted on another thread, appharvest is expanding its facilities, there are now 4 new greenhouses under construction-
Richmond, KY - 60 acres, tomatoes
Berea, KY - 15 acres, leafy greens
Somerset, KY - 30 acres, berries, prob strawberries
Morehead, KY - 15 acres, leafy greens (in addition to the 60 acre tomato greenhouse, which I have been at for almost a year now)