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Plants Grow Up, Not Out, In Couple's Stackable Plan

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By TONY MARRERO, Hernando Today

Published: November 23, 2007

MASARYKTOWN - Mike and Dee Blaha are moving up, so to speak, in the world of agriculture.

The Blahas are experimenting with a vertical growing technique that could transform their small farm on Wilson Boulevard.

The couple recently installed a 2,000-plant "stackable" growing system on a quarter-acre plot of their 20-acre farm.

The two biggest pluses: water and land conservation.

"It just made a lot of sense," Mike Blaha said as he gave a tour of the farm recently.

The patented system is based on the science of hydroponics - growing in pots in a base besides soil.

The system is comprised of polystyrene pots stacked on top of one another on a central post. A drip irrigation system runs across the top of each row.

The Blahas run the water just long enough for the plants in the bottom pot to get the water they need.

They estimate water savings as high as 80 percent over a traditional plot, a crucial statistic in a time when "drought" has become a household word.

By expanding up instead of out, the productivity rate per acre of land has quadrupled, Mike Blaha said as he walked down a row of white pots overflowing with green. R2, the family's Chihuahua-Dachshund mix, bounded along behind him.

"If I can put 4 acres worth of plants on an acre and use 80 percent less water, it's kind of an ideal situation," said Blaha, who was raised on the farm, which has been in the family since the 1940s.

No Weeding Required

It gets better, said Dee Blaha, who has devoted much of her time to caring for the new system and calls it "her baby."

There is no weeding, and no climbing aboard a tractor to till the land. The system has eliminated the need to use cages and strings to support plants because even heavy crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers do well.

And it has greatly reduced the amount of bending over, Dee Blaha said.

"Those are the things about a garden that I hate to do," she said, laughing. "He didn't even have to talk me into it. I was like, 'No weeding?'"

The Blahas are growing more than a dozen fruits and vegetables, including strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce, peas, bell peppers and squash.

The $3,500 investment has allowed them to turn a corner of their farm where clay soil makes it unsuitable for farming into a fertile field.

Ocala-based Verti-Gro has been manufacturing the systems for more than a decade. Mike Blaha saw the system at an agriculture convention last year.

Now the Blahas are working with Verti-Gro founder Tim Carpenter to experiment with the best mixture of synthetic soil to use in the system.

A drawback of the setup: nutrients tend to leach through the system from top to bottom, creating an imbalance among each stack of plants.

The Blahas are a good laboratory to find solutions to such problems, Carpenter said in a telephone interview.

In addition to their vegetable farm, the couple raises hormone-free, free-range chickens, hens, pigs, sheep, turkey and cows.

But their specialty is rabbits. Under the long rows of rabbit cages are compost bins where they produce three kinds of earthworm.

The worm manure - chemical-free and rich in nutrients - has proven a good growing base for the vertical system.

The Blahas are looking for ways to supplement the mixture to deal with the nutrient leaching. They think periodic doses of natural additives such as fish emulsion could be the key.

A Need To 'Do It Differently'

Carpenter grew up on a citrus farm and had his own small plot by the time he was 13 years old. He started a greenhouse supply company in the 1970s.

He later sold it but remained dedicated to the idea that hydroponics could revolutionize agriculture.

By the 1980s and '90s, it was clear that energy costs could wind up crippling farmers.

"It was killing us, and I could see it was going to get a lot worse," he said. "I just didn't see growers surviving without increasing efficiency."

The need to develop more ecologically friendly farming techniques also spurred him to create the vertical system. Those concerns have only increased over the years, he said.

"We're going to have to do it differently," Carpenter said. "We can't continue to pour water onto this sandy soil here in Florida."

Many strawberry growers are already sold on the Verti-Gro system, Carpenter said.

The growers have extended the traditional growing season by two months or more because the pots protect the roots from the temperature extremes of soil, he said.

The longer growing window makes up for the fact that, with some bulkier crops, the stackable pots sometimes yield less per plant, Carpenter said.

He has buyers in places such as Canada, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and South Africa. Most are small- to medium-sized operations, but a strawberry farm in Plant City is installing a system for 120,000 plants.

He acknowledged that some might criticize the use of polystyrene pots. But the pots, he said, are high-grade and guaranteed for five years and can last a decade or more. After that, they can be ground up and added to potting soil.

Epcot Center has featured the system in its science exhibit since 1996, and recently conducted a review to ensure it was ecologically sound, Carpenter said. It passed muster, he said.

Carpenter also sells home kits that start at $60 for a 12-pot system.

The Blahas have agreed to become a Verti-Gro dealer. They also envision increasing their own setup to as many as 15,000 pots and perhaps even automating the irrigation system.

They'll rely on their customer base to decide what to plant, Mike Blaha said.

"We're trying to find out what people want," he said.

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