Innovative Soil, Water and Energy Conservation Portable High Tunnel Vegetable Production System for Season Extension Small Farm Application

The purpose of this project is to design, install, demonstrate, and evaluate a portable high tunnel growing system that improves soil quality as well as the management of irrigation water and fertilizer applications to vegetable crops. A novel design of a portable high tunnel will be demonstrated that uses a bottom rail to allow movement of the tunnel between adjacent fields. Additionally, this project will demonstrate and apply to vegetable crops some of the latest commercially available technology in automated moisture sensing presently used in the floriculture and will demonstrate non electric powered pond to tunnel field water delivery systems. Small wind and solar electric systems are used to power the irrigation sensors and control systems. This production system is geared toward medium to small sized farms using high tunnels to accelerate spring market production and overall season extension in growing vegetable products for local sales and marketing.