Costa Rica methods

[Skyking]

I came across this in the paper and thought I'd share it
For Heredia tomato farmer, the investment is 90-day bet

By Dennis Rogers
Special to A.M. Costa Rica

Tomato prices are high, and substantial areas are being planted around Santo Domingo de Heredia, but a local farmer only wanted to talk about the risk involved.

Jorge Chávez of San Isidro has a hectare of freshly planted tomato, while the large area around Santo Tomas and Los Angeles de Santo Domingo belongs to the largest tomato grower in the country, Javier Rojas. The latter has packing plants in Grecia.

Land is available since coffee is unprofitable over the long term and when plants need to be replaced it’s just as easy to grow something else. Some places have tomatoes on fairly steep slopes which have traditionally only been used for coffee. Considerable land in the Santo Domingo area is held by speculators who don’t mind if they can get some rent in the meantime.

Chávez takes his produce to the CENADA wholesale market. He also grows some stringbeans and other green vegetables for the local market.

Agriculture requires faith in the price that will be there when the product is ready for harvest, in the case of tomatoes in Heredia after 90 days. Chavez said that the elaborate setup for tomatoes costs about 1,000 colons per plant, with 10,000 plants per hectare. This includes the plants themselves, poles and plastic for the “semi-greenhouse” sheltering the rows, PVC drip-irrigation tubing and/or sheet plastic to maintain moisture in the soil, and wind blocks. The rows are oriented towards the prevailing wind which changes with the season in the area near the Zurquí pass.

Chemicals used are mostly insecticides for a tiny white moth that feeds on the sap of the plants, with various other boring worms that attack the stems and fruit.

In good conditions each plant should produce about five

A.M. Costa Rica/Dennis Rogers

Young plants are ready to enjoy the drip irrigation

A.M. Costa Rica/Dennis Rogers

Plastic keeps the weeds down

kilograms of tomatoes over its lifetime, so the price received must be at least 200 colons per kilo to break even. At the moment the price for an 18-kilo tub at CENADA is 13,000 colons, or 720 colons per kilo.

For much of last year, the price was only 1,500 colons for 18 kilos, and Chávez said he lost 20 million colons.

[Skyking]

here's a homebuilt small hydro unit and another lettuce unit that uses red volcanic rock and just a plastic covering.we have to water each day by hand.Fungus problem last couple of weeks.
What nice maters look like with out a plastic covering in our rainy season.

[dustdevil]

Costa Rica is a beautiful country. Too bad growing toms there is such a PITA.

[Medbury Gardens]

Man those lettuce certainly look nice though