A Small Farm Upgrade with a Big Payoff

If I had a dollar for every time someone says, “You must have a nice greenhouse!” after finding out that I am a flower farmer, we could probably afford the greenhouse that we don’t have!

I kid, but up until this year, we didn’t have any kind of covered structure for growing things on the farm. I use temporary low tunnels for our fall-planted annuals, but these are a far cry from any form of traditional greenhouse. When I started the flower farm, I chose to make investments in seed and small equipment. Covered growing structures are nice to have, but they are extremely pricey up front and just did not make financial sense at the start of our business.

If you’re local, you know that weather is a major factor in the Midwest, a massive understatement to say the least. While we are often plagued by large temperature swings, the biggest issue we face on the farm is wind. Especially in the early spring when transplants need to go out into the field, its not uncommon to have days with wind gusts over 30 mph. I guess that’s what we get for choosing to live on the open prairie!

Until this year, we’ve worked around the weather problems the best that we can. I start all our seedlings in the basement and would gently work up to hardening them off outside for field planting. Without a covered structure to ease them into this process, I’ve experienced a lot of loss over the years. A good rule of thumb is to expect 30% crop failure and plan ahead to overcome that, but I was experiencing more like 50% loss. For more delicate crops sometimes this percentage was even higher.

The finished product! Each of the sides roll up to the horizontal board to allow for maximum airflow.

This season I decided that enough was enough, and that a small investment was needed to help us get more seedlings safely transplanted out into the field. For a cost of about $700, I built a small hoophouse (essentially a plastic greenhouse structure that does not have a source of heat) to serve as a landing point between the basement and the field. (If you’re interested, I plan to do a building breakdown in a future blog post).

Without hesitation, this has been one of the best investments for the farm to date! Even without a heat source in the hoophouse, it helped protect seedlings from frost in March and April. I’m happy to report that seedling survival was probably more like 90% this year. Compared to previous years, this is a huge rate of success. Using the hoophouse has also helped us lower energy costs. Instead of starting heat-loving annuals in the basement under grow lights, I’ve seeded trays directly in the hoophouse and had great results. The only drawback I’ve discovered so far is that it gets HOT in there come late June. Even with the sides rolled up, I will probably have to install a small vent fan in the end wall to increase airflow. Overall though, I have no complaints!

All this is a great example of how supporting a small business can help them make much-needed upgrades. I know that a $700 hoophouse is not a massive expenditure, but it is one that took us several years to work up to because we had to prioritize other purchases instead. We’re getting better every year— thanks for being along for the ride!