Carbon Cycle and Greenhouses

When Delphine and I moved to our new farm one of the first things we did was to build a greenhouse to grow bedding plants of tomato, eggplant, cabbage etc. so we could transplant after frost and get a jumpstart on the season.

Whenever some dignitary from Texas A&M came to San Antonio, they sooner or later came to our farm to see what these organic faddists were doing. Four of them were out one day and when they saw my new greenhouse one of them commented, ”Beck, there is one thing you won’t be able to go organic with”, and they all chimed in with agreement.

The greenhouse was put up in 1972 and has been in use every since and to this day there has never been a problem with troublesome insects or disease in it. We did nothing to prevent these problems.

But looking back I think I now know why.

Naturally, we used all organic fertilizers but the main reason, instead of gravel or a concrete floor, we maintained a wood-chip mulch for the floor that stayed moist from the nutrient rich drippings from the potted plants above. The decaying mulch gave off an abundance of carbon dioxide for the plants, especially on bright sunny but cold days when the greenhouse had to remain closed.

A friend of mine, Rosco Jordon, had a six thousand square foot greenhouse where he grew tomatoes in each year. Rosco had our same experience of no diseases or insects. And he had very few culls, almost every tomato was perfect.

To cut costs he operated his greenhouse similar to ours. For fertilizer he used two pickup truck loads of half rotted, chicken house, wood chip litter-manure mix. For cooling it was natural ventilation by opening the north and south walls. For heating he burned waste crankcase oil in efficient heaters that created no pollution.

At one time I belonged to the Greenhouse Vegetable Growers Assn. and had the opportunity to tour many greenhouse operations. Rosco Jordon’s was by far the cleanest, most productive and profitable I had ever seen. A tornado destroyed the green house after the fourth year ending some valuable research. However, I see no reason the same production could not have continued under these natural methods for many years. Rosco had the carbon cycle working to his advantage.

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