Although cool temperatures and heavy rains have delayed Maryland's tomato season by weeks, one Sparks farm has been harvesting red, vine-ripened tomatoes since the first of March.
Duddington Farms is a hydroponic farming operation that grows tomatoes in a greenhouse without soil. The plants stand in plastic buckets of perlite and are fed precise amounts of water-based nutrients.
"With a field tomato you can have good years and bad years," says Paul Knott, a partner in Duddington Farms. "Other than sunlight, we can control everything so this tomato tastes as good in April as it does in June."
Knott, a general contractor with no prior farming experience, stumbled across a hydroponic farm through a work project about five years ago. Knowing that his friend and soon-to-be partner, Harry McDonough, was always in the market for new ways to make use of the land on his family's farm in Sparks, Knott approached him with the idea of starting an operation of their own, focused on tomatoes. McDonough, an independent financial consultant, jumped at the proposition.
The pair took a class at Crop King, a large hydroponic education and equipment provider in Ohio, and Duddington Farms was born (with the assistance of a third partner, Dave Miller) in 1999. Then it was just two greenhouse bays of fruit and a room full of computerized equipment, tanks and general gizmos.
Both Knott, 43, and McDonough, 55, seem more comfortable in khakis and polo shirts than gardening togs. Yet their foray into tomato farming has been a success. The farm yields about 100,000 pounds of tomatoes over a nine-month growing season, nearly twice as long as the season of soil-grown tomatoes. The greenhouse shuts down three months of the year for cleaning and propagating new plants.
"This is where the art and science of growing comes together," says McDonough, surrounded by 2,840 flourishing beefsteak tomato plants now in four greenhouse bays. "Changes in the tomato can happen in as little as 10 minutes. The art is in understanding what the plants need."
The science is what goes on at the base of the plants. Like a project from a mad scientist's fantasy, the beautiful green plants spring from the plastic buckets. A computerized system pumps nutrients into the buckets every 20 minutes during daylight hours. The plant fluid is drawn from the buckets each morning using a turkey baster and tested, and tissue samples from the leaves are sent to a lab in Athens, Ga., each week to verify the plants' health.
