For many years, Colorado was the world leader in carnation production. That is, until foreign production of fresh cut flowers and high fuel costs changed the focus of the state's greenhouse growers forever. There are still several good Colorado carnation growers left, but most greenhouse operators either switched to other crops or moved on to other ventures.

The 1998 USDA Census of Horticulture Specialties placed Colorado as the No. 1 state in greenhouse tomatoes with more than 4 million square feet under cover. These vegetable operations contribute more than $34 million in farmgate value to the state's agricultural economy. The next three states are California at 2,916,000 square feet, Florida at 213,000 square feet and Texas at 197,000 square feet.

SunBlest Farms LLC. in Peyton, Colo., is the newest greenhouse tomato operation in the state. The company completed its first range of greenhouses late last year and began harvesting in early April. The facility has 544,500 square feet of Dutch Venlo glass built by Greentex BV. There are plans to more than double production space in the near future.

A dream come true

SunBlest Farms is the life-long dream of general manager and co-owner Ludo Van Boxem. Before coming to the United States as a consultant in 1996, the Belgian native was a sales representative for DeRuiter Seeds in Europe and worked as an international tomato production and greenhouse construction consultant. His first opportunity for involvement in domestic tomato production was in 1997 with Colorado Greenhouse L.L.C. in Brush, Colo.

After leaving Colorado Greenhouse in 1999, Van Boxem joined with Arie Van Wingerden, formerly with Cherry Creek Growers, David Bailey, a former attorney, and Jan Verbakel of Greentex BV, in the Netherlands, to start SunBlest Farms.

Van Boxem chose Colorado for its high light, cool summers and relatively mild winters. Peyton is in an enterprise zone of El Paso County. Its low humidity and high elevation allow for efficient passive cooling or natural ventilation through roof vents.

Greenhouses are designed with automated shade and roof vents running the entire length of each range, which is unique to the traditional Venlo design. This vent design easily allows for installation of insect-exclusion screening.

Van Boxem said Venlo structures were designed to grow tomatoes. The design maximizes light entry into the houses for optimum quality and fruit yield. Also, the structures were fairly economical to erect at about $13.50 per square foot, including land costs.

Why tomatoes?

Van Boxem chose to produce tomatoes because that's the crop he knows best. The mission of SunBlest Farms is to bring a better, natural product to market. The company aims to produce tomatoes that are pesticide free; SunBlest uses natural controls such as predatory insects to control whiteflies, thrips and psylids. Other management techniques used include a trichoderma-containing product for preventing soil-borne diseases and insect-exclusion screens.

Like many other greenhouse tomato operations, SunBlest uses bumble bees for pollination.

"Our goal is to provide a high level of quality and service to a somewhat glutted market," said Dave Fahrenbruch, director of sales and marketing. He said greenhouse production needs to be market and sales driven -- that is, create a demand before supply.

"The greenhouse industry has always enjoyed the attitude of 'Build it and they will come,'" Fahrenbruch said. "Production was always first and they [consumers] will buy whatever we grow. However, in the current market, if marketing and sales are not first, production will out-supply demand all too quickly. We need to maintain high quality standards, for which the American consumer is willing to pay."

Fahrenbruch said he believes competition in the market is healthy. Each grower must find its own niche. The small grower can harvest fruit near ripeness and deliver it to the corner grocery store or farmers' market and command a premium price. The large grower must maintain a consistent harvest 52 weeks of the year, by the trailer load, to service large supermarket chains.

"At SunBlest, we provide all our premium product to just one supermarket (King Soopers) that services Colorado," Fahrenbruch said. "Competition is not an issue, as other large-scale greenhouse tomato growers lack organization and they all look alike. SunBlest Farms strives to be different."

Slower production

"We grow our fruit to be the highest quality with the best taste," Van Boxem said. "To achieve this, we use slower production strategies by growing at lower temperatures. This gives the plant more energy for fruit production."

Using a VanVliet climate control computer, the temperature set point is 59F pre-night (8 p.m. to 3 a.m.) and then it is raised gradually to 66F between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. During the day 66F is the ideal temperature, but the outside temperature does not always allow this temperature to be maintained.

SunBlest Farms grows primarily the beefsteak tomato cultivar Quest. Quest characteristically has very vigorous vegetative growth with long leaves, even under high light and temperature. The fruit is firm, very uniform and good size and has a long shelflife and high tolerance against russeting.

"To maximize the flavor, we drive the plants by heating the root zone with continual venting, effectively moving energy through the crop, Van Boxem said.

Harvesting is then done at Stage 5 to 6 for ripeness, while the competition typically harvests at Stage 2 to 3. Tomato fruit ripening and color development is normally classified on a 0 to 10 scale.

All packing is done by hand to prevent bruising and calyx puncture; this increases quality of the delivered product. SunBlest Farms is harvesting about 0.2 to 0.25 pounds of fruit per square foot per week. This is slightly below industry standards -- 80 percent of what company founders expected. "Our people are learning fast," Van Boxem said.

SunBlest Farms uses traditional hydroponic tomato production techniques except that plants are grown in coconut-fiber slabs or coir dust from BioGrow. Van Boxem prefers coir as a growing medium as it is a more "root-friendly" product. Plants are stronger and fertilizer uptake is more uniform. On a bright day, the crop is irrigated 45 to 60 times per day at about 2 1/2 to 3 ounces per irrigation. The irrigation/fertilizer solution is maintained at 2.7 to 3.3 dS/m. Coir provides some buffering capacity with its cation exchange capacity, which helps minimize nutrition problems.

SunBlest Farms also incorporates RootShield, which contains Trichoderma harzianum strain T-22, into the medium. The trichoderma colonizes roots in coir very efficiently. The company also intends to plant two subsequent crops by interplanting on the coir slabs to extend production life.

Finding qualified labor

With any new enterprise, there are always some unforeseen issues. David Bailey indicated that finding and training qualified personnel is probably SunBlest Farms' biggest hurdle. Peyton does not have a large population of experienced farm labor and on-the-job training has been slow. However, with low turnover and employee dedication, the company is gaining on production standards common to the rest of the industry.

Part of increasing production has been the result of hiring and working with a few key people. Kathleen "Kat" Mullen, an assistant grower trainee, is one of the key people in charge of insect scouting throughout the greenhouse facility.

"We cannot survive without people the caliber of Kat," Bailey said. She can be seen at any point in the greenhouse scouting for whiteflies or estimating pollination success by bumblebee visitations.

SunBlest Farms is also committed to education. Having only begun harvesting its first crop this spring, the company has hired its first student intern. Isabelle Prevost, a student from Laval University in Quebec, assists Mullen with scouting. The company is committed to educating and training greenhouse growers. The alternative would be to bring in European greenhouse vegetable growers. These growers would be expensive to find and move through the immigration process. They would also need time to adjust to production conditions in Colorado.

The company has faced other challenges trying to bring its first crop to market.

Finding a construction team was difficult in a region of Colorado where there were not many greenhouses.

"We should not have attempted to be construction workers," Van Boxem said. "We should have bought a turnkey greenhouse -- let the manufacturer build the greenhouse and stay out of the way. We would have been money ahead and brought our first harvest to market on time."

Another challenge has been finding an adequate supply of water. Colorado is semi-arid with annual rainfall about 15 inches in most areas. To acquire sufficient water rights that SunBlest Farms projected for further expansion, the company had to initially acquire a sizeable tract of land. Groundwater is plentiful, but wells are not performing to expectations.

"We acquired plenty of water rights with the property purchase, but the aquifers are not providing the water flow as predicted," Van Boxem said. New wells are being drilled, which has added to initial expenses.

For more: Sunblest Farms LLC, 14095 N. Peyton Highway, Peyton, CO 80831; (719) 749-2510; fax (719) 749-2512

Steven E. Newman is greenhouse crops extension specialist, Colorado State University, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1173; (970) 491-7118; fax (970) 491-7745; e-mail Steven.Newman@ColoState.edu; www.colostate.edu/Depts/HLA/GHEX.

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