Bear Creek Farms, owned by the Frogge family in Pampa, has flourished in their last five years of business and have been a continuous success as a vendor at the Pampa Farmer’s Market.
The secret? Their wind and storm-resistant greenhouses – and clever ingenuity on behalf of the family tending the garden within. Tony and Cindy Frogge, along with their son Ryan, built an indoor hydroponic gardening system that allows their gardens to grow and produce tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce abundantly.
“The longest (tomato) vine I’ve ever grown was 28 feet long,” Ryan said. “Last year, we produced over 6,000 pounds (of tomatoes) between 500 plants. Each plant is producing 160-180 pounds over the season.”
The Frogge family uses perlite as a substrate in their tomato greenhouse. Next door, in their second greenhouse, they use expanded clay pebbles which are “little spheres of clay that have been cooked in a kiln that are kind-of porous like the perlite,” Ryan explained. The second greenhouse houses cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and green beans.
The family has spent a lot of time in the last five years experimenting with many plant varieties in order to narrow it down to the best of the best. Ryan spoke about his journey to the ‘perfect slicer tomato’; “We probably went through 50-60 varieties of slicer tomatoes (before landing on the stevia variety.) A lot of the beefsteak genetics were giving us a bigger root and a very limited number of them (fruits).”
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