Farmer grows berries on hydroponic frontier

By BETH GLENN

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 1, 2000

Call Bob Waldo a pioneer.

Five years ago, the former hydraulics specialist chucked most of what he knew to enter Florida's fledgling blueberry industry. Now, having almost mastered that crop, he has signed his daughter on to help work a new agricultural experiment: hydroponically grown vertical greenhouse strawberries.

It's a mouthful that Waldo hopes will prove sweet. Whereas competitors using traditional methods have a short season for the strawberries, Waldo says he hopes to have a continuous harvest all year.

"I only do blueberries from April till May -- end of June at the latest," Waldo explained Friday from his Hudson berry farm, Bob's Berry Farm. "I did (strawberries) just to fill in the blanks, I guess."

Filling a niche in the blueberry market has made Waldo's farm self-sustaining, he said. Though he laments that too few people look for the "fresh from Florida" label on their blueberries and other produce, Waldo boasts that the state's growers are the only farmers in the world producing a blueberry harvest this time of year.

So after Waldo's employees pick and sort the succulent fruit, the blueberries are packed, taken fresh in his El Camino to Dover, and flown on to China, Germany, France and Japan.

Once the commercial harvest is finished, he lets people pick the late-ripeners or smaller fruit and purchase fresh berries that were less-than-perfect but taste the same on the average person's tongue.

But the income from blueberry season comes once a year, so Waldo wants to branch out.

He consulted his friend, Tim Carpenter of Belleview, who owns a company called Verti-grow. Carpenter's system involves growing plants in a volcanic ash mixture with a system of stacking pots, then pumping all the nutrients and fertilizer they need through a system of pipes and hoses. On Carpenter's Web site, his method is described as cleaner and saving space. His hydraulics training and a look at Carpenter's berries convinced Waldo to give it a try.

There was also the competition to consider.

"There are only two weeks you can pick them in Plant City after they're finished picking commercially," he said. Then farmers kill the plants and replace them with a more lucrative crop.

He has planted 22,000 plants on 1.25 acres since October and already had one harvest. He plans to control the conditions in his homemade greenhouse so that his plants will not only bear fruit repeatedly, but ripen in staggered increments. He expects the next wave of berries in another two weeks or so.

But he said growing on the frontier of hydroponic farming can be lonely -- especially if something goes wrong. Although growing without soil is supposed to cut down on pests, he said he recently battled an infestation from microscopic thrips that sucked dry about 400 pounds of his crop.

"This is a frontier," Waldo said. "The university system is constantly doing experiments on strawberries, but they don't know much about strawberries in hydroponic greenhouses.

"So you know there's very little knowledge. They just don't know how they're going to react to these conditions."

If the taste and look of the berries is any indication, the $25,000 Waldo invested in his green towers is starting to pay off. He pulled off several berries that were sweet enough to make the mouth pucker, fleshy and firm and deep red through to the center.

During the winter, Waldo's daughter and business partner, Nina Lewis, said they brought in space heaters to warm the berries. During the summer months, they'll use big fans and removable greenhouse walls to keep the plants cool.

If it all works, Lewis said, the plants will serve as Waldo's retirement account. He agreed. "In a few years I hope to be able to not do anything."

Pick your own

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