MEMBER PROFILE 



Barrett's Greenhouse &< Nursery 



Very Logical and Mostly Green 



he houses are 400 

 feet from the road. 

 Although the woods 

 ront have been 

 thinned, the structures 

 are not obvious. The 

 sign to the right of the 

 .dirt driveway is unob- 

 trusive, but the display garden to 

 the left is an eye-catching I0'x50' 

 mounded bed of mixed annuals 

 and perennials, a welcome addi- 

 tion to Swanzey's town center. 



?f 

 BARRETTS Greenhouse and Nurs- 

 ery began in 1994 when Bill and 

 Deb Barrett bought the 16 acres of 

 land with house and storage garage 

 on it in Swanzey Center. 



Born and raised in Keene, Bill 

 Barrett went to UMass, Amherst, 

 graduating from the School of Plant 

 and Soil Science. He decided to go 

 into dairy farming and he and his 

 wife moved to Maine — "We had a 

 farm up in Buxton. But the barn 

 was on one side of a highway, the 

 house on the other. It was okay 

 when we had no children, but after 

 we started a family, we said this is 

 no place to raise kids." 



So they moved back to Keene. 

 Bill raised pick-your-own strawber- 

 ries, worked at landscape construc- 

 tion, and at golf course mainte- 

 nance before deciding to start his 

 own greenhouse and nursery busi- 

 ness. 



IVlost of the land was second- 

 growth pine. Bill cut and stumped a 

 space large enough for his produc- 

 tion range. Leveling the land cre- 

 ated a terrace six feet lower than 

 the house and garage. That first 

 fall, he put up a 28x96' Ed Person 

 house parallel to the garage (these 

 two structures form the sales area) 



and a 14'x96' hoop house in the 

 new, leveled space immediately 

 behind it. 



After a promising 1995 spring 

 season, he put up three 2rx96' Per- 

 son houses — twelve feet apart 

 (wide enough for a snowplow) — in 

 the production area. The slightly 

 higher ground on the north and 

 west, along with the woods left 

 standing, act as windbreak. 



The houses are set on the points 

 of the compass, the west ends fac- 

 ing the road. 



All but the cold frame are double- 

 poly, heated with SunDair oil-fired 

 furnaces ("Oil seemed least expen- 

 sive — a few more Btu's than pro- 

 pane"). The poly is a no-drip acrylic: 

 "more expensive — it works fairly well: 

 the water sheets — and runs until it 

 hits the purlins." He doesn't hang 

 plants from the purlins — he doesn't 

 want to punch holes in the plastic. 

 For his hangers, he has several thin 

 rods connected to the undersides of 

 the ribs running the length of the 

 house. 



Each has a fan at one end and 

 wall shutters at the other, four Hori- 

 zontal Air Flow fans, and roll-up 

 sides. In late spring, the houses 

 are covered with 60% shade cloth. 

 Crops are grown on wire floor-on- 

 wood frame benches (4'x7' or 4'xl2') 

 going the length of the house, cre- 

 ating four-foot-wide benches down 

 each side, two three-foot-wide aisles, 

 and seven-foot-wide benching in 

 the center. The retail house has 

 peninsular benching — "for better 

 traffic flow." Weed mat (swept 

 weekly) covers the ground. 



Water is piped through PVC pipe 

 from a shallow well ("only 18 feet 

 deep, but it's always supplied all 

 the water I've needed"). Watering is 

 by hand; feeding, with a Dosatron. 



He's never had insect problems — 

 "good sanitation and the long pe- 

 riod in which the houses are shut 

 seem to take care of them." 



THE SEASON begins in January in 

 the basement of Bill and Deb's 

 home when the first seeds — pan- 

 sies and seed geraniums — are put 

 into the growth chamber. The 

 "chamber" is five plywood shelves — 

 each able to hold ten plug trays — 

 on a 2x4 frame, with a bank of flo- 

 rescent lighting above each shelf. 



Each tray is kept inside a plastic 

 bag until the first signs of germina- 

 tion and then under an acrylic 

 dome until the seedlings are strong 

 enough to be removed from the 

 chamber. 



Previously, Bill had funnelled 

 seeds from their packets into 20- 

 row seedling flats. This year, he 

 bought a secondhand Vandana 

 Tubeless Direct Seeder. He feels 

 he's been getting higher germina- 

 tion in the 288 trays. And the 

 plants seem to grow more quickly — 

 perhaps there's less transplanting 

 shock because more soil stays with 

 the root. 



He seeds most things two and 

 some — impatiens is one, three 

 times. The amount varies — there's 

 400 trays of impatiens and six of 

 calendula, for example. 



He buys in as well — vegetative 

 geraniums and fuchsia, variegated 

 and New Guinea impatiens. Proven 

 Winners... 



Transplanting starts in the retail 

 house, which is filled by March 15. 

 He then begins filling the lower 

 houses, one at a time. All are full 

 by May first. 



When starting up a house. Bill 

 curtains it into two sections with 



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HE PLANTSMAN 



