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Just Add Water, Hold the Dirt
At Hydroponics Farm, Growing Season Is Year-Round

By M.J. McAteer
Special To The Washington Post
Sunday, April 29, 2007; LZ01

Loudoun County's only commercial hydroponics farm started with two old friends, a high school reunion and a visit to Disney World.

The friends were Mary Ellen Taylor and Kathy Lentz, and the high school reunion was their 20th. They and their husbands shared a table, and talk turned to their common interest in gardening, particularly hydroponics -- the cultivation of crops in water.

The conversation was hardly surprising, given that Taylor's husband, Wally Reid, is a third-generation greenhouse grower and the curator of the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington. Lentz's husband, Dennis, an AOL executive, couldn't match those professional bona fides, but he had seen a hydroponics farm at Epcot Center that fascinated him.

Reid had the know-how, and the Lentzes had the wherewithal, and in 2001, Endless Summer Harvest was born. The Lentzes lived in Leesburg, and Taylor and Reid soon moved to Loudoun from Prince George's County to start the greenhouse operation in Purcellville. Taylor had just been laid off from her job selling security products, so she became the managing partner.

Now their farm sells 2,000 heads of lettuce a week along with herbs and greens, and they expect their output to double soon with the opening this month of a second greenhouse. Their produce is sold at farmers markets in Leesburg, Falls Church, Dupont Circle, Reston and Takoma Park, among others. Wegmans in Sterling has been a supportive customer, buying as much lettuce as the grower can supply.

Hydroponics farming has ancient roots -- though not in soil, of course. The Egyptians grew rice in water, and King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon used a hydroponics system to nourish his wondrous hanging gardens.

Today, hydroponics farming is common in countries that are short of land, such the Netherlands -- a quarter-acre of hydroponics greenhouse space can produce as much food crop as 10 acres of land -- and countries with inclement climates, such as Canada and Russia.

In this country, however, with its vast spaces and relatively benign weather, commercial hydroponics growers remain a relative rarity. Taylor said he thinks that will change as the population swells and the percentage of open land shrinks. Hydroponics is the future of farming, she said.

As practiced at their farm, it is certainly modern -- high-tech, high-yield and green enough to make Al Gore grin. The Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce gave Endless Summer Harvest its product of the year award in 2006 because the business combines two elements critical to the county's identity -- agriculture and cutting-edge technology, chamber President Tony Howard said.

That image helped land Endless Summer Harvest a spot on the Loudoun County Spring Farm Tour on May 19 and 20. In truth, however, it's always spring at the hydroponics farm.

On a recent visit, the whistle of a cold March wind competed with the sound of traffic blasting by on nearby Route 7. But inside the grower's buildings, it felt more like an early day in May. Taylor, sporting a floppy fabric brooch that looked like a big green rose -- "our butterhead lettuce," she explained -- offered a preview of the tour she will give for the county.

The first stop was tables lined with sprigs, mostly lettuces, that were just setting down thread-size roots under the bright lights.

Although Taylor and her partners thought of growing tomatoes the evening of that high school reunion, they soon switched to lettuce because of demand. Lettuce is the second-most consumed vegetable in the United States, after potatoes, Taylor said.

One of the biggest selling points for hydroponics lettuce is its safety. Endless Summer Harvest's produce never gets soiled, Taylor said, because it is fed solely on nutrient-infused, sterilized water. That eliminates the risk of the contamination that caused a recall of California spinach last fall. Endless Summer Harvest's produce also is protected from airborne pollutants because it is greenhouse-grown, and its sheltered life makes pesticides unnecessary.

Arrayed on the grower's starting tables were some of the 25 lettuce varieties it markets. Taylor pointed out how the rows of tiny plants, marshaled as neatly as soldiers at a surprise inspection, had no AWOLs in the ranks. The farm's full-time employee, Kirk Noll, who seeds each plant by hand into an individual sterile growing medium called an oasis, boasts an almost 100 percent germination rate. Perhaps he inherited his green thumb from his father and his grandfather, both of whom operated commercial greenhouses in Loudoun.

Noll plants seeds about every seven days, and the farm harvests about 25 percent of any given crop each week. The typical growing cycle for the lettuce is 60 days.

Taylor pushed through plastic strips that covered the door to a greenhouse where thousands of plants created a verdant view. Inside, it was not too hot and not too cold, at least if you were lettuce.

A computer is the farm's environmental engineer, deciding whether to turn on the fans or open vents. Air conditioning is unnecessary because the computer sees to it that the irrigation water is chilled in hot weather. In cold weather, it turns on the furnace, which next winter will burn biodegradable cooking oil from the Tuscarora Mill restaurant in Leesburg.

Trickling water is the white noise in the greenhouse, as the plants are continuously irrigated. Even so, because the water is recycled, the hydroponics system uses just 10 percent of the water that would be required for a comparatively sized crop in the field.

The water also is the medium for an experiment Endless Summer Harvest is conducting with a $68,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of its butterhead lettuce is being infused with calcium, the precise amount of which can be tracked by the computer, an impossibility with soil-grown lettuce. The experiment will help determine whether consumers will pay a premium for enriched lettuce. Wegmans will carry the fortified butterhead, and Endless Summer Harvest will track consumer reaction.

Taylor and her partners say they think their hydroponics technology might be patentable, and they are looking into franchising their operation. And come the next food-safety scare, they expect that more people will see the value of buying hydroponics produce.