ARCHBOLD, Ohio -- High tunnels, an increasingly popular solution to extending the production season for fruits and vegetables, will be the focus of an April 13 Ohio State University Extension workshop to be held from 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. in the northwestern Ohio town of Archbold.
Registration costs $35 by April 6 or $45 thereafter. Space is limited to the first 40 registrants. To register, contact Greg LaBarge, OSU Extension, Fulton County, at 419-337-9210 or labarge.1@osu.edu.
The morning session will be held at Sauder Heritage Inn, 22611 State Rt. 2, Archbold. Matt Kleinhenz, OSU Extension and Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) vegetable crops specialist, will share his research and experience using high tunnels and will address key questions regarding this growing technique: What to consider before buying? What crops are successfully produced in high tunnels? What precautions need to be taken into account?
The afternoon portion of the workshop will take place at nearby Kinsman Farms, where attendees will see a working high-tunnel structure and learn about site preparation for a new one. The 24-by-24-foot structure on the farm was erected in 2009 and grows lettuce, spinach, radishes, broccoli, cabbage and kale; other crops will be planted by mid-April to fill early CSA (community supported agriculture) orders. Kinsman Farms has also produced vegetables in mid-winter during the past two years.
High tunnels -- unheated, plastic-covered, relatively inexpensive structures --can grow lots of food on little land, can do it nearly 12 months out of the year even in the upper Midwest, and need less expensive equipment compared to larger-scale, open-field farming methods.
OSU Extension and OARDC are the outreach and research arms, respectively, of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
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