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Greenhouse Makes Life Easier for Farmers Growing Forward: The Power of Greenhouses

By Geraldo Reid

A plant inside Linda Hahn's greenhouse
© 2024 Geraldo Reid

GERALDO REID: Linda Hahn is a Baldwinsville farmer with about a dozen Greenhouses on her property.She relies on them during the winter months to keep her crops alive. Greenhouses are temperature controlled structures, allowing you to create your own climate and humidity that you expose your crops to. As for Hahn, she says entering the Greenhouses is like stepping into a different world.

LINDA HAHN: I love the greenhouses, especially when you come out in the winter and it’s, you know, 20 and snowing outside, and you come in here and it’s 75. Watching the plants grow and see the blossoms coming out, it’s nice.

GERALDO REID: Even though the Greenhouses have been hugely beneficial to her and her crops, there are some downsides of the wintery effects. She says certain conditions hamper her Greenhouses, leaving the results for her to see.

LINDA HAHN: If it’s really cold and windy, the wind just sucks the heat right out of them. And we have had nights that has frozen a little bit. And you come out and sometimes there’s frost on the top of the dirt.

GERALDO REID: Experts say new innovations have allowed farmers to grow their crops seasonally.

RICK WELSH: The ability to grow year round, is changing due to new technologies that have come out that allow, fairly large scale acreages of crops underneath cover.

GERALDO REID: Syracuse University Professor Rick Welsh used to work at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He says Greenhouses can be vital to farmers.

RICK WELSH: They allow you to grow crops. And what they do is they raise the temperature underneath the greenhouse several degrees. And, it can be, depends really, on what the material is and other conditions. But it protects you from frost for sure, snow and just cold weather in general.

GERALDO: For farmers like Hahn, cultivating plants in the winter months is almost non-existent because of their inability to grow. For those who use farming for their livelihood, they would have to put it on pause for a season. Experts like welsh highlights the importance of Greenhouses, expressing that without one in bitter cold areas, farming is nearly impossible.

RICK WELSH: Growing in the winter has been something that hasn’t been possible in winter-cold weather; States like New York to any great degree, other than if you had a greenhouse.

GERALDO REID: Although the Greenhouses need to be at warm temperatures to allow plants to grow, there are a few times when it freezes, sometimes leading towards good outcomes. Linda Hahn says when the Greenhouse is cold, it removes insects that bring threat to her crops.

LINDA HAHN: When you’re not using the greenhouses, it freezes in there that helps to kill any, bugs and things that might be in there.

GERALDO REID: And with two more Greenhouses under construction, Hahn is sewing her seeds to success one pane at a time. In Baldwinsville, for N-C-C News, I’m Geraldo Reid.

BALDWINSVILLE, N.Y. (NCC News) – Linda Hahn is a Baldwinsville farmer who grows crops all year round with the help her of her greenhouses. These greenhouses can be found on her 200 acre farm as she prepares for crop sale in the spring.

Greenhouses are building-made structures that provide a stable and warm environment for crops. They function to give farmers an alternate way of cultivation.

For Linda Hahn, greenhouses are essential to her farming career. With 11 built and two more under construction, her emphasis on greenhouses highlights what they do for her and her crops. As she relies on them for her livelihood, she also finds her work in thm rewarding. 

“I love the greenhouses, especially when you come out in the winter and it’s, you know, 20 and snowing outside, and you come in here and it’s 75,” said Hahn. “Watching the plants grow and see the blossoms coming out, it’s nice.”

Nevertheless, with all the benefits of the greenhouses, they have their downsides. 

“If it’s really cold and windy, the wind just sucks the heat right out of them. And we have had nights that have frozen a little bit,” said Hahn. “And you come out and sometimes there’s frost on the top of the dirt.”

The invention of greenhouses and other methods to protect plants in cold climates has proved to be effective and important to farmers. Places that experienced warm weather all year round had the benefit of not having to worry about the change of season to any great degree.

In cold climate areas, May to June is the prime time for growing and selling crops to consumers. But, the period before that hampered businesses. 

Syracuse University Professor Rick Welsh used to work at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He said that if a farmer didn’t have a greenhouse during the winter periods, cultivating would be difficult. 

“Growing in the winter has been something that hasn’t been possible in winter-cold weather,” said Welsh. “States like New York to any great degree, other than if you had a greenhouse.”

 

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