How I Got Into Commercial Greenhouse Growing

Back in the mid 70's, my parents bought some rural property, 30 miles outside Beaumont, Tx. They built a nice house on the 45 acres. Why here in this area, I'm not sure because Houston was our home town, 100 miles away. We had been living overseas at different places for almost 10 years, and my Dad was about ready to retire from his Electrical Engineering career. I was 18 at the time, and hated living out in the country. I had friends in Beaumont, and as soon as I could get a real job, I moved into town.

Before I moved, one day I was driving my Mom home to the "Farm" from a trip into the little town nearby. There was a house off the highway, that had a big hoop style Greenhouse, approximately 30 x 100 foot. Mom wanted to just pull in there to talk to the man who lived there. I was mortified at going to a strangers house, and just bugging someone, but not my Mom. She had no problem doing such a thing. Turns out, the guy came out, and was happy to chat with Mom, and show us his setup.

As it was, he grew hothouse tomatoes, and gave us a detailed explanation of how he went about growing a crop. Mom was looking for something to do, as she was totally going bonkers sitting out in the boonies, mostly by herself. She researched all she could about hydroponics at the library, and in magazines.

I moved to the city, and that was the last I heard about her idea for the next few years. Around that time, one of my older Brothers and his wife and kid showed up at my parent's house, and moved in. He needed something to do for money, and it was decided my parents would bank roll a Greenhouse for him there on the property. Him and my Dad drove to College Station, Tx the home of Texas A&M University, and attended some seminars on Hydroponic Farming, tomatoes to be exact.

My Brother dove into this project with a total commitment to making a success business out of it, and actually has been doing very well at it for 41 years now, only not as you would think. I'll explain how I got roped into this endeavour later in this thread. Some pics of Brother's first efforts, first.

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A simple frame work, sloping down to a collection sump for return nutrient solution.

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Polyethylene tubing laid over the frame like saddle bags. The seedling is inserted in through a small hole so the roots are submerged in the nutrient stream. The root mass grow into this stream, and fill in the tube eventually. A timer turns on a pump every twenty minutes to keep the roots saturated.

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A crop on the way

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Getting there

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Ready for market

The Experts at Texas A&M said during the seminars that the goal for tomato production should be 9 lbs per vine. Brother never exceeded much over 7 lbs as I remember. Still, with 1000 vines, he'd harvest over 7000 lbs. During the first years, he put up two more Greenhouses of the same size. At first, he mixed his own nutrient formula that he learned from the seminars. Later, commercial formulas came on the market, like Peter's Professional, which he used for years to come. Other brands at lower prices came later with the same good results.

He had to peddle his crop to hamburger joints and small grocery stores, but would also sell to everyone he met and friends of friends. One place was someone's hair dresser shop. You might notice the Hanging Baskets in the pic of him sorting the tomatoes. He would peddle a few baskets on the side while out selling. The woman at the hair salon went crazy over the house plants. It wouldn't take too much longer to figure out, Hanging Baskets were a whole lot easier to grow, and had much more profit per unit.

After the first couple of years, he changed to growing his tomato vines in grow bags, using pulverized pine bark. The pine barks was available in bulk by the dump truck load. The bark was a by product of the local paper mills and could be delivered for about $12 per cu yard, or about $180 a load.

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So, out with the tomatoes, in with the Hanging Baskets and other Ornamental Plants. He never looked back.

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Thank you for this. I really enjoyed the story and the pictures.

Now, one may ask, how did I get into this business? Well, I continued living in the Big City during these years (about 8), and had two good careers at that time. The last being at Bethlehem Steel Shipyard building Offshore Oil Rigs. I had lucked into a job in the Engineering Department as a Draftsman. I started as a contractor, but was offered a Direct Position with the shipyard, making good money and outrageous benefits including unlimited sick leave and a retirement plan. That lasted two more years, then the Oil Business turned to crap. The Shipyard closed down, not too long after I resigned.

In the mean time, my brother had gotten a divorce from his Spanish wife, handed the business back to my Dad, who was heavily invested by then, and took off back to Spain. Did I mention my Dad wanted to Retire?

I told my Dad, that I would come into the Business as an equal partner, and take over running the place. They had already hired a couple of Mexican guys to do most of the planting and watering, but Dad had to do the peddling. He was all to glad to have me come take over. We put up two more greenhouses at that time, for a total of 5. Now I had only a little knowledge of running a operation like this, from talking to my Brother over the years. I didn't have any problems picking it up, with help from my parents and having hired help do most of the heavy lifting. I worked along side the guys planting, and did the construction and maintenance. When Spring time sells started, I went out to meet the customers and find new ones. That year, we had gross sales of about 50% more than my Brother had ever done.

While my Brother was in Spain, a Spanish couple he was friends with, got a divorce as well. He was sweet on the woman, and she was all for going back to the USA with him. She came from a wealthy family that owned a bottle factory where she was the business manager. She had cash to invest in their own Nursery when they got back. My Brother wanted to start over somewhere else, namely Austin Tx.

I tried to talk him into coming back into our business, and we'd buy out my Dad. My Brother would hear nothing about it, and said no way would he move back to the Boonies. Well, when he got back and made a trip to Austin to look for a building site, he was in for a rude awakening as to what it would cost to buy property and start from scratch.

As it turned out, he began to come around to financial reality, discussed the situation with his new girlfriend, and they decided we could make a go at it together with a 60/40 split, them getting the 60%. I had told them that I hoped to get Married one day, and if she worked in the business, it would have to go to a 50/50 split. They agreed in principal at that time.

They had the cash to put up a 5 bay - 100' x 100' gutter connected Greenhouse structure, where you can walk from one hoop house, to the next without hitting your head. That year we increased our gross sales by double all time. The next year, we found 3 used Greenhouses that we bought and put up. We had branched into growing Poinsettias in the Fall for Christmas sales, and used these three houses for that.

This gave us a total growing area of 33,000 sq ft of grow space. The third year of the partnership, we increased our gross sales by 60% again. That's when the fighting started

Poinsettias before they turn color.
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After
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Ok, I’m hooked. Tell me about the fighting!

Commercial Growing is like a factory. You have to keep product in the line, ready to go out the door. Space is money. Light is the engine that makes things grow. In order to keep things at optium, plants growing on the top level, grow the fastest, and thickest and stout. Plants below, do get some light and will root and hang in there, but they need to move up top to finish out, as the top rows sell out the door. We made extra long wire hooks, so one hanging basket is on top, next one hung down below, then the next is on top, and on down the line. The floor would be covered, lined up tight, side by side, below the hanging plants. About 800 baskets could be hung top and lower level, and 1500 on the floor, rooted, and ready to move up.

Bugs and fungus love ornamental plants. It's a constant battle to keep those two under control. A bug eaten or fungus damaged plant is hard to sell. If damaged, they can be treated, but then must grow out to cover up the damage, but it's never the same as a plant that has never had any damage. Best to stay on top of things.

In addition, here in Texas, to be a commercial grower or seller, one has to purchase a Nursery License. One of the few business that have to have a license to do business in Texas. This also means an Inspector from the State will drop in from time to time, and look under the leaves of your crop looking for infestations of pest bugs and other items like worker exposure to pesticides. They are usually very nice guys, if you stay on top of the bugs. This means I had to go in at least once every two weeks and spray noctous chemicals all over everything, getting soaked to the bone in these said chemicals. I'd wear a respirator, goggles, rubber boots, long sleeved shirt and jeans, but still, I'd have a buzz going when finished. I'd go straight in and strip off and take a long, hot shower, then go outside and sit in chair with a strong adult beverage and jell.

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I take it that you didnt do the organic thing. Pretty tough to do here in Texas.

The fighting????

During the third year of my partnership with my Brother, I met a girl at one of our Garden Center customers. We hit it off pretty good, and she had a real interest in plants and taking care of them. After we had dated a while, I asked her if she would like to move out to the farm and work with us. She was excited to do something like that, so it was planned. Maybe I should have discussed this with my Brother and his Girlfriend, but I didn't. This was the beginning of the end.

My Brother started griping about every little thing he could find about me and my contribution to the business. Things had been great until I dropped the bomb about moving a girl in. One day, he had loaded some plants on the truck to deliver to a customer. When I got there, the customer said he couldn't use them. When I came home with them, my Brother pitched a fit, and threw them off the truck into a pile. Later he came up to me and said we needed to talk, and that it was not working out with us. One of us needed to sell out to the other and leave. He wanted an exorbitant price and terms, where if I didn't pay in full at the end of next season, he gets the whole place back and I leave with nothing. I countered with less than half of what he was asking, but I wanted cash. He couldn't do that, so it was agreed he would give me some cash, the last three Greenhouses we had bought and put up, a delivery cargo trailer, and some miscellaneous equipment. It took me a couple of months to find some land, take the Greenhouses down, move all my stuff, and get out. It was a very stressful time, during which I broke up with my girlfriend. Problems solve.

This is what my new place looked like after a couple of years.

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Thats sad. Are you and your brother all made up now? Your greenhouses look great.

No, mourningdove. Sadly not. In the last 30 years we've only talked a few times at weddings for my Nephews and Nieces, funerals for our parents and the division of the estate. The big lesson learned, is to Never go into business with family. Never.

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I did a cost analyst of my product to grow and market. Just the direct cost of expendables and labor, and I came out to $1.98 per basket. I divided the number of baskets sold into the gross receipts for that year, and it was $3.89 each. So, that's a 100% markup margin. Not bad, except if you figure the most baskets I ever sold was 10,000 units, or about $20,000. I had to pay a guy to work out there during the day, as I had to go back to work full time, so he got most of the profit. I still had to do maintenance, winterizing the Greenhouses, help plant, water, spray for bugs, bookkeeping and marketing, so it really wasn't worth it at that small scale of an operation. I'd have had to be three times as big to make a living full time. I only ended up with 5 Greenhouses total, and would have had to have 15 to make a decent income. I did much better by shutting the whole thing down and working full time. It's been shutdown 10 years now. I still have them out back, but they've become overgrown and have some trees come up, that are as big around as my leg.

I was so rooting (heehee) for a happy ending. I am sad you were not able to keep it going. I do not understand why family does this to one another!

That is sad. Actually, the moral of the story is: NEVER go into business with anyone, family or not, without a solid contract, including buyout agreements, IN WRITING!

What i also find to be sad is that people will pay so much more for decorative stuff than quality food! Ive seen it time and time again. Also, that you essentially can invest half a million bucks in land and equipment, work 100 hours a week, and make less than 40 thousand a year when it's all said and done.

Summerthyme

Thank you for the story and the pictures. Lessons learned too. I've thought of getting another bigger greenhouse but the work involved is more then I think I could handle at this point. I do appreciate those who do it though.

Pulverized Pine Bark. It was the growing medium we used for 10" Hanging Baskets and other 6" potted plants. Pulverized Pine Bark (PPB) is, actually just bark, a by product of the paper mill industries around here. They bring the pine tree logs into the mill, and run them through a big tumbler machine that debarks the logs. It's a big tube with spikes inside, that scrapes the bark off before the logs go into big chipper machines to grind up the pine logs to make pulp fiber for paper. I heard a story about two guys working inside one doing maintenance, accidentally got killed when somehow it got turned on. Yuck.

The PPB is a unwanted by product, that the mills paid a contractor to haul off. That is until the Mills built big incinerators to burn the bark for steam generation and electricity. For many years, a local contractor stockpiled the bark at his lot, and made huge piles that sat and composted. His company ran the bark though a hammer mill, that made the big chunks of bark, into a fluffy consistency. This he sold as PPB. It cost us about $11 a ton, or a little over $200 a dump truck load back in the mid 80's.

This bark was still composting when we got it, and often was still steaming hot. This PPB was the majority of our potting mix at about a three to one ratio with cut peat moss. The peat moss came from our nursery supplier in 4 cu yard plastic wrapped bales. A few scoops of perlite, a heat exploded mineral of some sort, would be added to the mix to aerate the mix. I figured it cost about $.03 a basket for this mix.

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Shade. Some plants like full sun. Most ornamental plants like shade. They are most all from the tropical rain forest, and developed under the tree canopy that offered filtered sunlight. Too much shade, and these plants grow leggy and weak, and are not very attractive. Others, mostly flowering plants, like full sun, or at least more sun. To suit these light requirement, we had shade cloth. Shade cloth is manufactured for different percent of light that is let through. I had shade cloths from 80% shade, down to 30%.
Some plants we grew right out in the sun, either under clear plastic, or just out in the open, depending on the time of year.

The clear Polyethylene plastic covers, usually went on in October, and came off in early April after the last chance of frost. A frost really messes up the tops of ornamental plants, and take months to recover enough to sell. Pulling the 40 x 100 foot sheets of 6 mil plastic is a choreographed art, that takes at least 3 people, and little to no wind. This is usually done just before sunrise if conditions allow. If you don't pull it tight, and staple and nail it down secure, it most likely will come loose during the winter at the most inopportune time with a freezing cold front blowing in the next day or that night. We bought 300 foot rolls of batten tape, which is the material old lawn chairs were strung with, and would be used to reinforce the connection of the plastic sheeting to the running boards down each side and over the top arch of the end walls. We would then run a belt of this tape from one side to the other over the top of the plastic sheet, at four or so intervals. Believe me, 40 mph winds during the passing of a cold front, plays havoc on a sheet of plastic that size. Staple guns and roofing nails were the life blood of success in this.

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Here's what the operation looks like today. There are some really big trees growing up inside the greenhouses.

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An interesting read. Staying small is the secret these days.