those pics are a couple of weeks old. i have since added lights and they are growing like crazy.

nothing flows through those pipes, they are capped off and are really just big reservoirs. each pipe contains 100 plants and is aerated by its own pump

i will post more recent pics later.

{{gwi:1308194}}

{{gwi:1308195}}

i would like to thank everyone here at gardenweb. i first started posting a few years ago when i decided that i wanted to grow tomatoes for a living. people here were encouraging(at least 85% of the people, anyway!). i have since grown over 100,000 plants and tomatoes have been my only source of income.

growing tomatoes in a green house is a lot harder than i expected. it took a long time to get the environment under control. it was a huge pain to get the temp under control. all would be growing well for a week or two and then i would find all the plants dead and have to replant.

any questions/comments/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

thanks again, garden web

kyle

Kyle, it looks like you got everything down to a T. Good to know you are doing what you love. That Green House must be a handful. Congrats!

Are you saying they are constantly in moving liquid?

thanks for the congrats, sprtsguy. i haven't gotten down to a t just yet but i am getting there. its not too much of a handful yet, right now it is just a headful!! the learning curve has been a lot steeper than i thought.....or maybe i am just not as smart as i thought i was! either case it has been frustrating just to get to this point.

soonergrandmom - they aren't in constantly flowing water, they are in constantly aerated water. kinda like a fish aquarium.

there is an airstone every four plants this supplies the oxygen to the roots so that they don't drown when the plants are young and the pipes are full. but as the nutrient level drops it exposes some of the roots to air. those exposed, unsubmerged roots are good at getting oxygen. so, when the pipes are full it is a "deep water culture" system but as the nutrient level drops due to the plants using it and evaporation it becomes more like an aeroponic system.

thanks for the questions. i eat, sleep, and breathe tomatoes so it is very nice to talk to someone who is interested. my friends and family are sick of hearing "tomato this"&"tomato that"

Kyle, How many months of the year do you grow tomatos?

These pictures made my eyes boggle-- what a cool setup! I had no idea that one person growing tomatoes could wrangle in a sustainable income. This is quite an inspiring post.

soonergrandmom, i will be growing 12 months a year. this is my first crop in the greenhouse. i just finished building it a month or so ago.

melonpocky, one person can make a great living at growing tomatoes or anything else. there is going to be a lot of learning and a lot of work but you can do it. i started with $400 and a half acre not even 4 years ago. with the tomato house and the tomatoes that i will produce outside this summer, i expect to clear $100k by this time next year. its not that i am the world's best hustler either.

i believe its man's god given right, or gift, or whatever you wanna call it to make a decent living off of a humble investment of land. "he who tillith the soil shall be satisfied with bread". but maybe i've got a different definition of "bread" than was intended!

i am going to train those tomato plants down to a single stem and tie them along the fence shelf that is above the pipes. that will allow me to keep the whole plant in the growing canopy instead of just the top. the plants wont shade each other either. the fruit will hang below the fence shelf in the shade. picking, pruning, planting, and system maintenance is all done at waist level.

wow! very cool...very "epcot"...I love it and can't wait to see the tomatoes...

that is amazing! I woul dof never thought one could make a living growing maters....

If you could post more pics that would be great! I love looking at them!

i really appreciate the compliments. it is so nice to get approval for something that you put so much thought and effort into. my friends and family can appreciate it from a business standpoint but they arent really "tomato people".

jasong31, you can certainly make a living growing tomatoes. think about how many pounds of tomatoes you can get off of one plant and then think about how many plants you can put, say just in your yard. it doesn't take long to add up. if you are a good salesman you might get retail price for a small crop.

i like to set up farm stands around town, at least two. i will hire someone to work that stand for a percentage of what that stand earns. that way if the stand doesn't sell much then i don't have to pay much. while the stands are doing their thing i make my rounds - restaurants, grocery stores, even a beauty salon!! they take orders for my tomatoes and i fill them 2 or 3 times a week. there is also a large factory that i sell to. an employee of the factory takes orders at lunch and on breaks then i fill those orders to him and he delivers the following day.

at first, i was intimidated by the selling. i live in a small town and i had ruined my reputation when i was younger and i was outright scared of all that recognition!. but the first phone call of my first year eased all the fear. i was interrupted during my sales pith with "how fast can you have 40 pounds down here?". it is easy to sell tomatoes.

...how many local tomato farmers do you have in your area?

its a position waiting to be filled.

thats nuts... i was curious who you sold too... How much do they sell for by the pound?

Amazing story and pics...

When you first started, you say you started with 400$... care to elaborate some on what you did?

Thanks!

good morning, jasong31. I probably average a $1 a pound. i get more than that at the farmer's market but sometimes less than that when i wholesale.

my first year growing tomatoes was not by choice. i had been growing marijuana indoors for a few years. that is where i got my hydroponic experience. long story short: i got busted. i spent a few weeks in the county jail and then i finally made bond. when i got home, my house had been ransack. all my growing supplies were gone as well as all my money!! i had been stashing cash here in the house and all but 500$ was confiscated.

the week i got out i applied for 64 jobs....not a single call back. i was devastated. the small town i live in remembered all too well that i had just been on the front page of the paper a few weeks prior. i was doomed.
while i was in jail i had rekindled a relationship with a friend of mine. this guy is a very successful businessman and is kinda like a mentor. so, i explain the employment problem to him and he says "get out there and grow your garden full of tomatoes" . i had the same reaction a lot of y'all did. i didn't think it was possible to grow tomatoes for a living. and even if it was possible, i didn't want to do it. but at that time i didn't have an options.

so, i took my remaining 400$ and spent every dime of it on tomato plants. i had about 3000 plants that first year in the small garden spot beside my house. before they even got ripe i started selling those tomatoes just like i did marijuana. at the end of the season i had put together about 10k$. not a lot but enough to get me interested.

at the end of that first season i immediately built a small greenhouse and bought a boat load of seeds and all the seed starting supplies. i almost starved that winter but the next season i planted 30,000 plants and i have been off to the races ever since.

Hi! I remember you from 2-3 years ago. Didn't you have a meth problem at one point, got yourself straight and bought an older home on some property? I remember the pics of your garden and cats. Well, he**s bells, I applaud your tenacity. You take a lickin' and keep on tickin'! Fantastic greenhouse. Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life!

Kyle, right?

Best wishes and continued success.

Duane

This is good to read. Congratulations on your tenacity and ability to make things work out for you. What a great thing to make your interest in tomatoes into a thriving business.

What named varieties of tomatoes do you grow, and do you produce your own seed or buy hybrid? Are you primarily growing tomatoes bred for hydroponics, or is there no big difference which kinds do well in your set up? More pictures please!!!

Kyle,,Good for you to be able to come on to this site and confess your past. You have obviously bettered yourself and WOW !!! making that kind of money from tomatoes is awesome. Who do you sell to?? Is it primarily farmers markets?? or do you sell to the big grocery stores too?? Do you have a stand in front of your house??? Look forward to hearing from you. ctufts

Hi there,,I obviously missed the post you already wrote about who you sell to. sorry about that. ctufts.

what size plot did you start with when you started up with the 300 plants?

LOL!

Man dude, you rock. Your story is what living in America is all about. A second chance at life and you took advantage of it and did it your way.

The thing I have a problem with is that your family gets sick of hearing about tomatos. God, I would be thrilled and proud of you for doing the right thing and making a pretty good living at it to boot.

(On a side note, pot shouldn't be outlawed anyhow.)

I have an acer of land behind me that isn't being used. Last year I started mapping out in my head an asparagus farm. After reading your post, I think I'm a step closer to really doing it.

thanks so much for all the compliments. but nobility really isnt a very big part of my character, im afraid. you do what you have to do. i swing for the fences because this is it for me. i cant make it in some corporation because i am uneducated, a multiple felon, and just a little rough around the edges. i can either make a living being an entrepreneur or i can starve to death making minimum wage the rest of my life. a big corporation wont take a chance on me but i will take a chance on me.

you'll strike out sometimes when you are swinging for the fences but you ain't gonna hit a home run trying to lay down a bunt.

almost everybody has a plan that can work. fear renders most people paralyzed in their comfort zone. the fears that the tomato game poses aren't scary to me because of my past. the tomato business has kicked me a few times but nothing like the kicks the dope game gave me. i haven't gotten arrested for growing tomatoes yet. fear, in my opinion, shapes the way we think. fear says "i cant" and then all your hope and faith and confidence gets infected by fear. to me, rooting out all my fears of failure, financial insecurities, of what people thought of me, etc is my key for success... and happiness. it seems like all the negative emotions are based in fear. as a species we are so scared we are gonna loose what we have or that we ain't gonna get what we want. at least thats how it looks to me.

ddsack, i grow big beef, amelia, arkansas traveler, and tradiro in the greenhouse. of those tradiro is the only one bred for greenhouses. it doesn't really matter about what varieties you grow in hydroponics but it does matter what varieties you grow in a greenhouse. you need something that can set fruit in the heat. i grow all heirlooms outdoors. my favorite tomato to grow for selling is campbell's 1327. my favorite tomato to grow is mortgage lifter - it goes nuts!! its got some serious vigor.

jasong31, i started off with 3,000 and that was on a half acre.

face, swing for the fences and be the best asparagus farmer you can be. you can do it if you know you can do it.

i am gonna post some more pics tonight. i took those monday, they are quite a bit bigger now and are beginning to flower.

WOW!!!!

You should be on Oprah....=)

this is the same plant from the pic above after six days later. you might not be able to tell from the pic but it has almost doubled in size.
{{gwi:1308196}}

by the way, that is Brittany(girlfriend/tomato protégé) holding the plant. she told me to tell y'all 'hi'.

Bkyleh very inspiring. I have one question what is the,or what kind of foam are the plants growing through

Bkyleh Thanks for sharing your story! Your story made me thing of something...

I get prodded by the co-workers in the office because of my gardening obsession. They all have said at one point in time, independently, "BE CAREFUL, police choppers using infrared beams will bust you for growing marijuana in the basement" (I don't). I would say 90% of people I have talked to that are not into gardening.. that is their first reaction to my little growing setup. They seriously think police have time to systematically scan neighborhoods for people growing pot. At first I was amused by the reaction, but I've come to realize the average person has no idea how to grow plants with optimum growth inside (from seed). Their paranoid reaction to a grow light setup is amazing to me. Maybe growing weed is more common in these parts, but it isn't my intention. I just want tasty vegetables and take pleasure raising them myself.

Anyhow your trials and tribulations look like they've paid off. Keep the pics coming!

cactus184, that is just regular foam from a graft store. i found a big piece on the remnant table and cut it up.

but the plants don't actually grow through it, it is a collar that holds th e plant until it reaches the screen. there is no growing medium. i start seeds in a 288 plug tray and when the seedling has one true set of leaves i pull almost all the roots off and put it in the hole and put foam around it to keep it from falling through.

I'll post some more pics in a minute. and, by the way, my name is kyle. i think i forgot to introduce my self. its alot easier to type than bkyleh!

thanks again for all the compliments,

kyle

Wow.

So it looks to me that the roots more than doubled in a 6 day period. That's impressive.

As far as your comment about being uneducated, nothing could be further from the truth. I think you've got quite an education and your also very smart.

Keep walking us through the process please.

thanks for the encouragement, face. i appreciate your comment.

the roots grow like crazy because there is no medium. and like i said earlier - a plant can only grow as fast as its roots. thats why a plant in potting soil grows faster than a plant in heavy clay soil. this system capitalizes on that fact in two ways. first, there is no medium - no perlite, no rockwool, no clay pebbles like in most systems. second, as the nutrient levels drop gravity pulls on those roots and the are free to grow in a warm, very humid environment.

keeping the nutrient solution warm is very important. this is another lesson i learned through trail and error. each 88ft pipe contains seven 300watt heaters. the solution stays about 75 most of the time.

{{gwi:1308197}}

as you can see they are starting to clear the fence shelves. as they fall over onto the shelf i will train them to it.

also, notice the tightly spaced internodes. that lets me know that i am getting plenty of light, not suffering heat stress, and have plenty of nitrogen in my solution. tightly spaced internodes equal more fruit in a smaller space. i always count a plants internodes to see how well it is growing. height means nothing because bare stems do not produce tomatoes. also, regardless of how tall or short a tomato plant may be - it will be sexually mature at between 5 and 8 internodes...usually.

{{gwi:1308198}}{{gwi:1308199}}

Kyle, Is your operation safe from the flood waters?

I love this thread! Very cool setup, Kyle.

Kyle, I must say, very awsome! I really like the set-up. I saw that you are going to make it a year-round operation. How are you going to keep it warm enough in the winter? Is that what the lights are for? Are you going to replace the plants every so often? Anyways, very cool set-up you have going! Excellent job of turning your life around as well! Keep it up!

Kevin

Hey great seup -- a word of non-tomato advice....track your costs (and sales of course) extremely close for tax reasons! Don't let the authorites have your number from that angle!

This is of course the accountant coming out in me who grows toms as relief from pure numbers during the day. I can help if you'd like from the business end.

Don
dstucki85@hotmail.com

Your setup is very Epcot! I love it! Run a flume system through the center and you'll give Disney a run for their money. Can't wait to see when your tomato house is a thick jungle of tomato plants.

I was wondering if you've considered vibration from sound or wind to give even more vigor. The Mythbusters did an experiment with sound influence on greenhouse plants. The result was plausible. Here's the except from Wikipedia: Talking to Plants. The end result was that heavy death metal music resulted in the most growth (my thought is high amplitude and frequency vibration caused it)

no, soonergrandmom, the flood didn't get me. the town i live in got it pretty bad though. it was the worst flood i have seen since 1982.

Kevin, i have a big heater in there. the lights do provide a substantial amount of heat but that is not their purpose. and i will probably cycle the plants out once a year. some growers keep them a little longer but disease is so bad in this area that i will consider myself lucky if they live for a year.

Don, luckily my best friend is an accountant. and i keep pretty good records, i write down every dollar i spend and keep all my receipts.

bencjedi, they get vibrations from the wind. as soothing as death metal may be, they are going to have to tough it out in the silence. it may do wonders for the tomatoes but it makes me want to pull my hair out!! thanks for the link. that was an interesting article.

they are really growing now. i can see the difference daily. it wont be long until i will start pollinating.

thank you all for the kind words, i really appreciate it.

kyle

Kyle - Glad to hear the flood waters didn't get to you. I heard that the highway going into your town was closed, so I was hoping you were on the other side of town.

Kyle, I teach HS Autistic students, one of my kids(he is a budding gardener and non-verbal) saw your pics. and was amazed at your set-up. He asked me to ask you 2 questions, if you don't mind.
1. How long is your greenhouse and pipe?
2. How many tomato plants can you grow in this greenhouse?
I will have him design a plan and give him a grade.
Thank you so much!

nip-n-tat, i don't mind a bit. the house is 28'w X 96'l. each of the 7 pipes is 88'long and has 100 plant sites for a grand total of 700 plants. please tell your student that i think its cool that he is interested in horticulture and that if he has any more questions he is more than welcome to email me. also, tell him that if he is ever in this area i would love to give him a tour. thanks.

i would like to let this thread die because it is getting too big and taking too long to load. i will post some more pics in a new thread tomorrow if anyone cares to look at them.

i really do appreciate all the compliments, questions, and interest.

thanks,
kyle