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Around five miles southwest of Holland sits the property of Earl Giesbrecht, the owner of Giesbrecht Gardens. On this farmstead the Giesbrecht’s grow a variety of hydroponic lettuce and herbs in a greenhouse facility that the family constructed in the summer of 2023.
The facility, which was mainly constructed by the Giesbrecht family with some help from hired contractors, is approximately 144 feet long and 90 feet wide. Attached to the facility is a lean-to that the family calls “the hen house,” which measures around 90 feet long by 20 feet wide. Housed inside of the greenhouse are three large deep culture ponds, each which holds around 53,000 gallons of water, Earl said.
The operation dumps minimal water for its size, approximately 400 gallons a day. Otherwise, the rest of the water is used by the plants or evaporates. Their water bill, Giesbrecht said, is not a concern as they fill the pond from their well, however, heating the facility is accomplished through the use of propane. Sometimes on a good day in the winter, heating the greenhouse doesn’t require a lot of energy, he said.
“On a sunny day even in th winter time you sometimes won’t need any heat and the fans will turn on and vent a little heat out,” he said. “But when the sun goes down then the propane starts.”
Plants spend approximately two weeks in a little nursery inside of the greenhouse before being placed into the water. Some of the seeds are placed by hand and the rest are placed by a seed vacuum. When they are ready to go out into the water ponds, they are placed on rafts that float in the water, and the roots are typically pulled through the holes in the raft with another vacuum. The plants initially start out as 72 plants per raft, and as they grow, they are spread out to various rafts where there are typically 18 plants per raft. Fertilizer is applied to the water, but nothing is applied to the foliage of the plants. The time it takes to grow the produce is on average seven weeks from planting to harvest, Giesbrecht said, although this time of year can take a little longer.
“This time of the year is really slow,” he said. “We are at the shortest days of the year. Some of it is probably out here longer than that but that’s a typical length.”
It is a family run operation, where Earl, his wife Carrol and their children work together to plant and harvest their produce, with occasional help from hired hands. The family grows at least 10 varieties of lettuce at a time in the facility, Giesbrecht said, including Butter Head lettuce which they market as a BIB variety, and Romaine lettuce, which is the most popular variety among customers. Additionally, they grow a variety of herbs. Giesbrecht’s primary customers are area grocery stores, restaurants and hospitals, he said, and his produce goes as far as Sioux Falls and Marshall as well. The lettuce is sold unwashed and uncut, much like you would buy at a farmer’s market.
Giesbrecht decided to use the hydroponic method of farming, because of the ability to grow produce throughout the year, and because of his interest in growing plants.
“We can grow them year round, we heat the water and we heat the air, and there’s no weeds,” he chuckled. “So those are some advantages. One of the biggest things is the year round thing. We go right through the winter and you can keep your customers all year round. I also like to grow things.”
In 2006, the Giesbrecht family moved from California and bought the farm that they now live on. Although they were residents of the West Coast state at the time, previous to the purchase, they were living in Zimbabwe, Africa, where they worked as missionaries. In 2011 the family returned to Zimbabwe to continue their missionary work until 2013. During that time, Gibesbrecht was only operating his welding business, AG Weld, on the farm and they hired someone to run the welding shop while they were gone. Before building his own greenhouse, Giesbrecht started growing his produce down the road in a greenhouse that was set up as a NFT system that used plastic channels in the water to grow the plants. After around three years, the family decided to move the operation to their property and built the greenhouse that they run today.