 Hello, you all. My name is Andrew De Silva. I'm the new extension vegetable specialist. I have talked with you before during the vegetable school 2022 about tomato production, about cucumber production as well, variety selection, fertilizer management, irrigation, and today we are switching gears a little bit and moving to high tunnel vegetable production because I want to just introduce what are the challenges for high tunnel production, what you can grow there and how can you optimize the land and increase your profit. So if you are a small grower or a home garden high high tunnel is a very good, it's a very good approach for you to increase the value of your produce per area because you can produce sometimes that open field cannot do that. And if you are a higher, bigger grower, I saw that there from the from the quick survey that they did in the beginning there are one or two large growers here with 20 to 50 acres. That's also a good opportunity for you like to provide produce or to have produce for like big contracts or even farm markets in a time of the year that it's like not very common. For example, lettuce early during the winter or tomato or the spring. So if you have gone to some grocery stores, you have seen that the price of tomato increase and that's because there's a shortage shortage in the market. So if you have a high tunnel, you can be able to sell your produce at those high high prices. So that's what you would be looking for if you're doing a high tunnel, if you want to install a high tunnel. So this is going to be a very introductory one. So feel free to make questions if you have a particular question how to do some specific thing like what fertilizer or how much water to apply or feel free to make a question. But first I want to start talking about what is a high tunnel? I don't know if you guys are familiar, but a high tunnel has the same green is the same structure as a greenhouse. So it can be of lumber, it can be of aluminum. Just one quick thing if you are doing for organic area, lumber should not be treated while if you have aluminum, you don't have any problem. It's usually covered with one layer of six mil film and it allows for solar heat and wind cooling. So you can allow for ventilation there because you can manually open the sides of your tunnel like you see here we have sides or here in the door we can open the door. So this is a recently new high tunnel, actually we finished building these two high tunnels last Friday. So those two high tunnels are in our organic farm in Chelten in the UV Smith. So if you guys want to visit and see how is a brand new high tunnel that's a good opportunity in an organic field and we can manage them as we want. Usually high tunnels can go from 10 feet by up to 96 like 10 feet off with it like here we have a 32 feet one and can from 10 to 32 wide and it can go up to 96 foot long. So this is what you're going to be dealing with. So if you have a smaller operation so you can go with a 10 feet or a 20 feet you just need to find what is the best specs that's going to allow you for that's going to allow for your area of production. So this is a brand new one like I said that we can open the sides or allow for ventilation. So during the summer when you use two or like when you're going to have like higher temperatures you can open the sides and allow for ventilation to don't let like stressor plants with heat. Those high tunnels they can be permanent which is the most common one but nowadays you have those that are mobile one and then you can move from one location to another. I will not get in depth about those that can be moved I will focus on the permanent one because like 99.9% of the production we have in the state is going to be with permanent one. And here I just put a quick price per square feet and that's how you're going to buy it. You can get it from like many vendors and they are very practical for installation or you can build your own. But why I'm talking about to use those high tunnels because high tunnels have five points of benefits that I want to talk today and that's going to be the focus of my our conversation. So the first one is because high two that they can extend growing season what is it means we can plant like a particular crop early early in the season or we can plant when it's in the spring or we can plant a particular crop later in the fall. So that's the benefit and that's what I want to talk. Also it can mitigate risks associated to weather like we're going to talk a little bit later about like the cold this frost that we just got this past weekend or we can talk about having rainfall events. So that's some of the benefits of high tune. It can also reduce past pressure. And we're going to talk about the permanent exclusion system. Dr. A has a very strong program on how to install those exclusion system and he would be a good person for you guys to approach in consideration for like how to avoid insects on high tune. Finally how to manage those high tunnels to enhance crop yield and how do you can get a higher quality. And as the last one I want to talk I'm just going to come back for how marketing and what is the advantage of a high tunnel on you to market your produce. So that's how we're going to be talking today. So first of all we're going to talk about extending growing seeds. So here I put a quick graphic that is an ACS publications from Dr. Campbell on how when to grow vegetable crops in Alabama. And we have for all most of our common vegetable crops here that can also be grown in Alabama. So those are for open field. On high tunnels you can get up to 60 days of early season. So just thinking about why a grower can why a open field grower can be will be harvesting their bell peppers in June, July and August. A high tunnel grower could be harvesting May and April when there is no market when there is no bell pepper in the market. So that's when you can have your higher price. So I just emphasize here in this sentence that a well managed high tunnel growing seed growing system utilizing plastic mulching with razor bed mulching film and brokovers can length the growing season. It's a frost in a frost free period which would be when the grower of the high tunnel would be planting their bell pepper or whatever solar masses by as much as 60 days. So that's the first advantage. I just showing you examples with the bell pepper but the same can be proted by cabbage which is a cool crop which we usually harvest in October for the fall season or in April and May for the winter for the spring season with a high tunnel cabbage in a high tunnel you can harvest it in December or you can harvest it in January. So you don't have that impact of the frost that we usually do have during the winter. So those are the kind of advantages that a high tunnel can provide for a grower. So but to do that you need to be careful. You need to prepare your planting dates. You need to be like you need to keep track of your planting dates, your variety selections, when to plant and how to do the crop succession because you don't want to plant the same crop in the same location to avoid problems with disease and you don't want to plant everything in the same day because you need to support a market. So you want to do different planting dates in order to supply that market with your produce. So keep that in mind playing with planting dates and crop succession is an important thing on a high tunnel production. And how it can mitigate risks associated with the weather. Like I said before we can have frost protection. Here is a common temperature of the this graph here shows a common movement of high temperature in high maximum temperature in red, minimum temperature in blue or how we have during the spring early season as we have January and then all the way to the end of the season. So you need to see when you are planting and what is the weather conditions for that because when you have outside temperatures completely different from the temperature inside the high tunnel. So that's what you need to understand in order to optimize your production and select the right planting dates. One good thing of high tunnel you don't have wind damage, you don't have a directly sun exposure or you can even cover your high tunnels with some shades so you can grow during the summer. And also you don't have the directly impact of rainfall events that you can like soak your field and though all those problems frost wind damage directly sun exposure and rainfall events can cause some of the common disorder in produce like I talking in my first class on tomato production like sun scouting in tomatoes or cracking because of rainfall events and the rapid growth of tomatoes or even you can have some hails on by winds or other problems in your tomato. So those are the advantages of the tomato it's of the the high tunnels it's gonna allow you to produce a high quality and reduce the problems with cools when you are harvesting your produce. We had a very good example like I said in the beginning this past week for a for the frost protection. So this is just a graph where we have Friday, March 11, Saturday, March 12, March 13, March 14, March 15 which is today during this weekend and this is the weather for Central Alabama. I got this from the a little bit for a weather station a little bit north of Montgomery. So just for you to see a high tunnel production the green area here represent optimum temperatures of outside for high tunnel production while the red it's going to be too low for high tunnel production. So imagine if you for field production sorry so imagine if you are a grower who thought that we already had our last our last frost of the year back in January in February and you put your watermelon in the field you put your tomato in the field but then you suddenly had that lower temperatures on Saturday or even Sunday where it's got lows of 27. So that's temperature will definitely kill your plants so but if you had a high tunnel that would not be the case you would have a reduction in growth which would delay your season but it will not kill your plants. So that's a benefit of having a high tunnel you don't have those problems with weather conditions that are very common on open field. Another topic that I'm going to go with very quick on high tunnels is that while the weather is something beneficial insect disease and weeds are also easier to control however keep in mind if you don't do a proper integrated path management and that's what Dr. Sacora will be talking later you're going to have a quick infestation for example these three white flies here in this leaf can quickly become a high population in a high tunnel because they have all favorable conditions to reproduce in a high tunnel it's a closed environment rainfall cannot knock them down and they can quickly spread they can also quickly grow aphids there from a small one they can also be large aphids and they can start to transmit disease and that's what Dr. Sacora will be talking later about the disease problems but see white flies can transmit crumple virus so it can quickly destroy or outbreak your high tunnel production if not properly managed or you can have even other disease for tomatoes if you don't like have soil-borne disease there you will not be able to plant tomato for a while if you have problems there so the management of disease and also weeds and insects in high tunnel must to be quickly managed otherwise you're going to have that area infested and over one season to another you will be losing a lot of yield potential so here is just some example of some goose grass that can go this is in an open field that we have but in a high tunnel it's going to be very similar it can quickly spread in the field and we can even see more high tunnel so my recommendation is if you are growing in a high tunnel and you will not plant in the summer because you are achieving highest yield in your market during early spring and late fall don't go to the beach and leave your high tunnel unattended please go ahead plant a cover crop try to manage problems that you have during the season with a cover crop or with any other uh practice like solarization or any other um cash crop during the summer otherwise you're going to start to having more problems we're going to come back and talk a little bit more about that but I would like to give one of good examples that Dr. A usually talks about the pest exclusion because he has some permanent exclusion system to prevent the pest establishment like the use of shade claws is a low cost option and easily available for the growers so here is an example from Dr. A where we install it he installed it in a growers field like this shade claw this net that will not allow insects to enter in the high tunnel so that's why we say that is a permanent exclusion system it's going to be all the time there it's to allow air movement and most important it will avoid insects to get into your system this is a particular photo that I really like from Dr. A because we have like we can see insects trying to get into the high tunnel but our exclusion system is working the way how it was supposed to be so that's one of the ways that because you can open your sides allow air to ventilation and is still protected from your from insects so switching gear from the IPM program that we still gonna talk later I want to talk about give you guys some options of how you can enhance your crop yield and your crop yield potential and your quality in high tunnel you want to plant high value crops you have a high investment to build that high tunnel or to purchase that high tunnel and you want to make that investment worth so select crops that you gonna have higher yields or I mean higher value so tomato cucumber spinach pepper strawberry strawberry summer squash lettuce and even cut cut flowers are good options for for high tunnel production I just put some photos here that we have from some of the high tunas that we have played tried before and to show you that like those can all all of those crops can be produced in the high tunas in this state of Alabama but to do that you need to do a quick three steps so going let's say you decide to plant on your high tunnel you decide to move forward and yes we're gonna do a high tunnel once you do a high tunnel you select your crop but now follow three steps in order for you to maximize your production and don't have problems first step is do a crop rotation here we have a quick line of what crops should be succeed by the other ones so let's go for a four step crop rotation plan we have first we we grill our leaf green in area one and then in the same area which is the same high tunnel we go with a fruit a tomato a bell pepper next season we're gonna do some root we can plant some carrots we can plant some potatoes there try to diversify and then later you come with a legume plant some beans there plant some dry bean there so this way you can maximize your year and next and in the next season you come for again with greens this will minimize your problems with disease with insects okay so that's a good operation or a crop rotation that your operation should have in order to maximize yield once you select your crop you build your you created your plane of crop rotation then you're going to talk about irrigation and fertilizer management in a high tunnel i will not go in depth crop by crop that should be the fertilization of the crop by crop fertilization program i'm gonna say follow the fertilizer recommendation and use soil samples we have the vegetable book the vegetable handbook we have the high tunnel uh vegetable handbook so you guys have all this information on hand if you don't find it contact your uh your agent they can they can contact us or you can contact us directly and we're gonna help you with that but one thing that i would like to emphasize on the fertilizer and is nowadays the price of fertilizer is just increasing so consider use compost and manure that's not a problem our currently recommendation for goes from 120 to 400 gallons per 100 square feet in high tunnel production and do that about 120 days before harvesting your crop follow the food safety is important in high tunnel production as well because you cannot apply raw manure before if you are harvesting your crop in 120 days so apply it before that otherwise if this is raw manure if you have a composted manure or a treated manure then you are good but if not do if it's a raw manure 120 days before harvesting and i would recommend you guys to apply this uh this uh manure or this compost before planting in advance so you can allow it for uh nutrients to be available and follow up with some liquid fertilization that's important for you to supply nutrients in the middle of the season don't only apply it pre-plant and think that oh we're going to be all fine remember if you have like high temperatures you're going to have mineralization of your nitrogen there you're going to have maybe that nitrogen will not be available for your um for your crop most importantly a lot of compost they are high in phosphorus and then if they have high temperature that phosphorus will not other nutrients and will not allow plants to update other nutrients so don't rely only in a high application of compost and manure it's a very good approach to use manure i would strongly recommend however follow with other fertilization don't only apply the manure and fertilizer or nutrients are linked in a way with irrigation that if you change one you're going to affect the other so irrigation is another key important aspect in an high studio mostly because when you have a high tunnel you are change the environment of your crop you have higher temperatures that will enhance your plant growth but those plant growth that those higher or faster growth also require more water for your plants so irrigation management becomes important in the high tunnel so there are two things when we talk about the irrigation management first is what system to use the most common ones are drip and sprinkler irrigation however i would say say no for sprinkler irrigation because you want to apply water in the soil not in the plant if you apply water in the plant you're create optimal conditions for disease to get into your plants and that's going to be a problem so prioritize drip irrigation if drip is not okay it's not feasible for your operation then it's okay to go with sprinkler or with an overhead irrigation and most of the growers think that oh uh sprinkler irrigation is a single um a single uh investment while drip we need to change every year yes that's true however the likelihood for you to fail with a sprinkler is much higher than with a drip irrigation or you're going to need to have a higher investment in uh disease and past control with a sprinkler when compared with a drip also sprinkler require more water consumption than a drip consequently you're going to have more cost with pumping that water more water also is required so because of all that factors i strongly recommend our growers to install drip irrigation in their high tunas that they're gonna they're gonna see a considerable uh increase in yield and reduction in inputs once the the irrigation system is determined i would go with the irrigation stand if you have seen my talks about irrigation scheduling i usually recommend three types of scheduling in alabama for open field which is the systematic the crop evapotranspiration and soil moisture sensors but that's for open field in high tunnel i would recommend or you do the systematic irrigation which requires a irrigation panel in your high tunnel and you're going to apply the same volume of water every day or you're going to run your system at the same time or you're going to use the soil moisture sensors where you're going to apply water according to your soil uh your soil water availability the reason why i don't recommend the crop water demand or using evapotranspiration is because the environmental conditions within a high tunnel is different than outdoor so you will not be able to provide you will not be able to estimate how much water is being lost by your plant so using the soil moisture sensors are currently the best approach for high tunas in irrigation stamina systematics are okay however you also is applying you are applying water by feeding you think that your your plants need that that volume of water which might be not true so if you are a very experienced high tunnel grower your uh the systematic irrigation or using a panel to apply the same volume every day it's probably going to be a good option however if you are not if you are new i would strongly recommend soil moisture sensors and if from those experienced ones using sensors they're going to see that they have a much better return and an increase in their use so once you are finished with step two i will move for step three which is the best management know your disease know your insects know your weeds we have all the publications available for you to identify that know it in advance for your crop because like i said a disease an insect can quickly spread in your high tunnel for disease do a good cultivar selection select cultivars that are resistant for particular disease in your area and you're going to do always a preventive management which means you don't want to see the disease there you want to first you want to first apply products that will not allow the disease to grow in your area or use cultivars that are resistant for that disease while insect use the permanent exclusion system insects it's more like you control it as you see there so frequent scouting of your high tunnels are very important while the weed management you're going to be doing the scouting for the insect and you need to do that some problems that you have that you're going to have in alabama with weeds in your high tunnel will be nut sad will be morning glory and those are like big weed and those are those weeds that are very common also outdoor so follow those know what you're going to be dealing with so this way you can be like more quickly on the prevention or on the management of these pests so do those three steps and you're going to be able to see some increase on your yield this is a data that a group of in the southeast put together for how much yield can be increased in high tunnel production when compared to open field so just take a look on the cucumber while you can you can yield point half pound half pound per square feet in the open field in a high tunnel you can double it and look at this spinach you can have like almost six or nine times ten times almost nine eight times more on the spinach production bell pepper five times more tomato you can increase four times more so just see how better how higher is your yield if you do a good crop management in your high tunnel so those are the benefits of the high tunnel if you do a good crop management you consequently will have a higher yield than in an open field and you're going to be adding value to that product because high tunnel is much easier for you to a management than open field even for organic so if you are doing a high tunnel I would strongly recommend try to certify that high tunnel if you certify that high tunnel for organic production that's going to be a good approach for you to even increase your profit per area so those are all the benefits that a high tunnel have and when we are talking about marketing that I said that would be my last topic I would come back for those planting dates that I talked in the beginning of my of these presentations so you are looking for off season windows remember bell pepper you don't want to harvest bell pepper off a high tunnel in June you want to harvest that before June or after November so that's when you have your best winter same thing that we talked about cabbage and not and like that and you go on for every single crop do a succession of crops and planting dates try to diversify your production and finally add the value for your product conventional versus organic high tunnel versus open field this way you're going to have a higher profit and optimize the use of your high tunnel so just to summarize a little bit the importance of height of of uh to the take home message from this uh this presentation today keeping in mind that high tunnel they do have an extreme potential and they can be done in Alabama in the entire state however it does require investment it is an upfront investment that you should be considering when you select uh when you have your high tunnel selecting the high value crops can help this paying back but remember you need to do your crop management and your high tunnel maintenance this is key for you to maintain that high tunnel for a long time and you don't need to do more investment or rebuild a high tunnel and finally playing with your mark marketing is fundamental play with your plant aid succession of plants and if you need any of these information at the alabama extension uh at the aces we have a high tunnel crop production book that now is available um i believe we are releasing the second edition of this high tunnel crop production handbook and it's going to be available uh online and you can download that and even read from your cell phone so those are all informations that you have available and if you still have any question you can contact me or contact our agent we can come together with a plan to help with any problem and let me know if you guys have any questions