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Bushel Boy Farms has a simple desire to grow fresh, premium, quality fruit year-round. We harness technology to create innovative and sustainable growing methods. Our growing methods optimize fruit quality and ensure the safety of our fresh produce, our employees, and our environment.
Innovative technology enables us to ensure ideal growing conditions all year long. Environmental systems monitor and adjust light, temperature, nutrient levels and CO2. We strive to be environmentally responsible by capturing rainwater with a 96% utilization rate. No CO2 is released into the atmosphere from our boilers. The CO2 is filtered and redirected into the greenhouses because plants breath CO2 and release oxygen.
Each and every day of the year, our staff is in the greenhouse gently hand-picking beautifully ripe, still-on-the-vine tomatoes. Because plants grow vertically and can have up to 9 clusters of tomatoes on the vine at any given time, they are supported from the greenhouse roof by spools of strong twine. As the plants grow taller, we lower them to ensure the cluster that is ready to be picked is at eye-level for ease of harvesting. We hand-pick and package more than 60,000 pounds of tomatoes every day. And after the day’s harvest is done, we go back to prune the leaves, check the consistency of the tomatoes and make sure every plant is as healthy and productive as possible.
Bumble bees in our greenhouses do their work the way nature intended: flying around and pollinating the tomato plant flowers. They’re experts at their work, pollinating much more efficiently than we could ever do manually. Roughly 50 to 60 days after they pollinate, the tomato plant’s flowers have transformed into ripe, juicy tomatoes, ready to be harvested.
At Bushel Boy, we take great pride in being a sustainable farm. Unlike tomatoes grown in the field, we save hundreds of thousands of gallons of water annually by capturing and reusing excess water that is not absorbed by the plants. By simply filtering the water and using UV light to sterilize it, we ensure that we have virtually no unused water; every last drop makes it right back into the plants.
Picked ripe. Delivered Fresh. We let our tomatoes ripen on the vine as long as possible before picked them. Those tomatoes are then rushed to a store near you, arriving in hours after being picked, not days. That is how we ensure Bushel Boy tomatoes are garden-fresh when they hit the dinner table.
“At Bushel Boy Farms, our talented team grows the best tasting fruits and vegetables, providing consumers across the Midwest with high-quality, locally grown, fresh produce all year long.”
Chuck Tryon, President of Bushel Boy Farms
We donate literally tons of tomatoes a year to help local food shelves fight hunger, shipping our less than perfect tomatoes to Second Harvest Heartland in the Twin Cities and Channel One in Rochester. We are proud to provide these organizations with fresh, healthy produce to help families in need get good nutrition.