MEMBER PROFILE 



V.>yRCHARD 



HILL 



GREENHOUSES 



ORCHARD HILL 



GREENHOUSES 



Traditional 



Mix 



Orchard Hill — the name is appropriate. 

 Apple orchards are on both sides of 

 the three acres where Mark Tepper's 

 house, seven greenhouses, and an of- 

 fice/storage building form a semi-circle 

 around a steep south-facing slope of 

 lawn. 



Mark has been in the business thir- 

 teen years, working as head grower at 

 Plant Action in Lexington, Massachu- 

 setts, before moving to Londonderry 

 five years ago 



Construction here began in May, 

 \QQO Part of the slope was dug out 

 and the fill used to create a level area, 

 and, by that October, three 30xQb New 

 Englanders (8500 square feet of pro- 

 duction area) were facing west along 

 the east edge of the property The 

 first crop was 3000 potted mums for 

 Thanksgiving It was sold in two weeks 

 Later a 25x25 wooden office/storage 

 building was built above and west of 

 the three New Englanders. It faces 

 IH^^ south-west. 



This February he added over 5000 

 square feet of production space by 

 Works putting up four south-facing 17x80 In- 

 {^^■^H flatlon Busters at the crest of the hill. 

 "We were right behind the construction 

 crew, filling the houses with bedding 

 plants as fast as they put them up." 

 (Mark's home is just beyond the Infla- 

 tion Busters, slightly below the crest, 

 facing south-east.) 



?^ It's a Straight-forward Opera- 

 tion — The two New Englanders clos- 

 est to the road have benches — wire 

 stretched on wooden frames set on ce- 

 ment blocks — going the length of the 

 houses. In the rest, the plants are 

 grown on weed control ground cover. 



In the Inflation Busters, overhead 

 rotary nozzles are used for the water- 



Still 



ng or constant feed — usually 250 ppm. 

 All feed lines are part of a system 

 onnected to an injector set up in the 

 torage/office.) The height of the 

 lozzles is adjusted in order to give 

 ■ven coverage right to the edge of the 

 lOuse; Mark finds they work well until 

 he plants get bigger and the foliage 

 an prevent the water from getting to 

 he soil Rotary sprinklers are used in 

 he one New Englander without 

 lenches; all hangers and pots are on 

 drip irrigation 



Automation is important; it allows 

 Mark to run the range with surprisingly 

 little help. Family is crucial: Mark's two 

 daughters (ages five years and four- 

 teen months) are still too young to do 

 much, but his father-in-law (retired) 

 puts in full-time hours and Mark's wife 

 (she works full-time at Raytheon) and 

 mother are there during busy times 

 (Mark does his own book-keeping) 

 The only outside employees are two 

 college students who work weekends 

 and summers and a woman hired to 

 handle retail business in spring. ..a lot 

 is done by these few people 



He heats with propane — "the cost is 

 close to oil and has fewer cleaning 

 problems." There are three lOOO-gallon 

 tanks — one behind the Inflation Bust- 

 ers, two behind the New Englanders; 

 each house has a 275,000-Btu primary 

 heater and a 225,000-Btu backup; a 

 15,000-kW generator to be used in 

 emergencies is in the storage/office. 



Mark has saved costs by designing 

 some of his own equipment: the ger- 

 mination chamber he uses is a 2x4x8 

 box of 8 mm Polygal; inside are five 

 shelves of benchtop metal on angle 

 iron frames and a 2 1/2-gallon humidi- 

 fier Florescent and gro-lights outside 

 the box, along with heating cables in- 

 side and the heat of the room itself, 

 keep the temperature at 70F Mark 

 uses all plugs, seeding all his own ex- 

 cept begonias 



He recently built himself a flat- 

 filler — a motorized auger, two speeds, 

 room for three bails of mix in the hop- 

 per—that can fill 17 flats a minute. 

 Transplanting is done in each house — 

 the prefilled trays— 800 per Inflation 

 Buster — are stored at the end of each 

 house until he's ready to use them 



The Planlsman 



