Tomatoes

HumberVHB produces a range of speciality tomato crops at its Runcton Nursery site, near Chichester in West Sussex.

All of the tomato varieties have been grafted onto rootstocks in order to provide additional summer plant vigour and also to help combat disease problems, such as infection by Verticillium wilt.

The introduction of a range of natural enemies of the common glasshouse pests affecting crops is standard practice at Runcton Nursery and great importance is placed on the utilisation of new predatory and parasitic insects as they become available. The major pest of tomato crops is whitefly and Growers in the UK have been introducing a tiny parasitic wasp called Encarsia formosa to control this pest since the 1970's. Red spider mites are controlled by introducing Phytoseiulus persimilis predatory mites and other pests such as leaf miner, caterpillars and mealy bug may all be tackled with biological controls.

The plants are propagated under lights at a separate site and transferred to Runcton in December. Flowering usually starts in January and the first loose fruit or trusses are harvested from late March until the middle of November of the same year. Special bumble bee hives are also introduced into the crop from the onset of flowering to ensure that the flowers are properly pollinated and that the fruit shape and overall quality fully match the requirements of the customer. These hives are regularly checked over the crop production season, in order to maintain the optimum bee numbers in the crop.

The plants are trimmed and trained by hand on a weekly basis and the fruit or fruit trusses are also harvested by hand to ensure that the fruit is selected at the optimum stage of ripeness for the product. The fruit is then distributed to the relevant supermarket depot using refrigerated transport, thus ensuring that the freshness of the product is maintained.

The old crop is cleared at the end of November and is prepared for composting at a nearby organic farm. The plants are grown in a sterile slab medium known as rockwool and all of the crop requirement for nutrients and water are provided via a drip irrigation system. Any nutrient solution which is not utilised by the plants is collected, filtered, sterilised using ultra-violet light and recirculated back to the plants. The rockwool slabs are recycled at the end of each year by pulverising the material and incorporating it into the manufacturing process for new house bricks.