Rural Heritage October/November 2025

2025 Greenhouse Tour HPD 2025 Seminar

The peppers in the greenhouse didn’t make it. They were pulled out and replaced by some lettuce plants that Gary happened to have with him. That brings us to the second big problem. A valve got stuck and nobody noticed it, so the watering system stayed on all night long. This set them back because peppers and tomatoes do not like wet feet. The greenhouse used two types of trellising systems. The first, Florida Weave or Basket Weave, sandwiches the plants between lengths of twine that run horizontal, that is, parallel to the ground. In the second, what Leon called String and Clip, a clip gently grasps the stem while, at the same time, the clip also grabs the string which reaches up to the ceiling of the greenhouse. Leon gave a weekly formula they used for raising flavorful tomatoes on the 153 plants that were in the greenhouse. • 8 pounds of 4-18-48 for plants low in Potassium • 5 pounds of 10-20-20 the backbone of flavor • 5 cups of Bio Terra Green liquid fish imported from Chile • Dormant Ecovam to activate microbial activity in the soil • Gypsum composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate for low calcium • Foliar fed calcium • 2 ounces of SiMag 58 for sulfur and magnesium • 8 ounces of raw Epsom Salt for magnesium and sulfur • 1 ounce Siman 911 for manganese • 2 ounces of MetaboliK HV1 for phosphorous • 2 ounces of Phyto-Gro Extra for phosphorous Leon wanted to try Mountain Man tomatoes. They’re a little smaller and don’t load up so high with fruit as Gary’s favorite, Red Deuce. The record for Red Deuce was 68 pounds of tomatoes per plant. Leon said that next time they would have two rows of grape and cherry tomatoes. These tiny tomatoes, when mixed in a clamshell, bring good money at the produce auctions. They are an excellent crop if you have the labor to pick the fruit. The family taking care of the greenhouse would keep the money from fruit sales the rest of the season.

by Mary Ann Sherman L eon Hershberger of Cushman Creek Supply (CCS), along with Gary Shafer of ISP Technologies, conducted the Greenhouse Tour. First, Leon showed us the CCS Mixing Unit. This model was the 35-gallon tank version, but the 85-gallon tank model is more popular because of its bigger tank. That allows you to dump a 50-pound bag of fertilizer into it and have it dissolve quickly when you turn on the agitator for the required time. The valve system lets you hook up to a header hose and inject the solution into your system. Once you’ve injected all the solution, the mixing unit stops. The unit can be put on running gears and taken virtually anywhere. The cost is $2,500 but Leon said he’s considering putting into their catalog a hand-drawn version which can be made for “peanuts.” This was the third time that Horse Progress Days had its Greenhouse on this site: 2012, 2018 and 2025, The family taking care of the greenhouse had never run a greenhouse before. In the past Leon and Gary had used people like this but there was usually an expert of theirs who could check the greenhouse every week for signs of trouble. This time, that didn’t happen and there were a couple of serious problems. First, they became heavily infested with aphids. They were so bad that if you turned over a leaf, there was no room for one more aphid on the leaf. The aphids were caused by nitrogen being too high. Leon said this was his fault. He wanted to use pelletized chicken manure. The directions called for 3 pounds per 100-foot row, but he used 5 pounds per row in the greenhouse and those rows were nowhere near 100 feet long. That provided too much nitrogen, and the flavor was only so-so. Leon and Gary expected to pull down the nitrogen level, get rid of the aphids and move on, but nothing that they tried worked, not even NEEM. They actually considered pulling out all their plants and starting over, but finally decided to use more drastic measures, namely non-organic insecticides. That is why, when you entered the greenhouse, there was no sign saying that only organic insecticides had been used here.

Rural Heritage

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