Photo Tour: OSU’s High-Wire Tomato Academy
July 7, 2025 
Photo: Ohio Controlled Environment Agriculture Center
During the last week of June, Ohio State University’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (OHCEAC) hosted a five-day-long course on high-wire tomato production. Created specifically for growers, the course taught 10 participants about tomato crop physiology, crop management, integrated pest management (IPM), and more in lectures and hands-on workshops at the Controlled Environment Agriculture Research Complex (CEARC) in Columbus, Ohio.
View all
“It was a great event. We had a relatively small group of people from diverse backgrounds attend, and we got to show them how this type of commercial production is typically done,” says Jason Hollick, Ph.D., the lead instructor. “I think it was a great learning experience for both attendees and the course instructors.”
Here’s a breakdown of how the course went:
- Day 1: Morning lectures focused on greenhouse design, energy management, and basic tomato biology. The hands-on lab in the afternoon focused on greenhouse safety, crop management, and crop registration.
- Day 2: Attendees learned about greenhouse climate, tomato sink/source balancing, crop management, plant health management, and integrated pest management (IPM). The afternoon greenhouse lab focused on crop management, vine training, and IPM.
- Day 3: Attendees learned about greenhouse climate data, rootzone management, irrigation management, and nutrient design in the classroom. Afterwards, they worked with drain lysimeter (a device that monitors water movement through rootzone) and practiced nutrient sampling as well as crop management in the greenhouse.
- Day 4: The morning lecture focused on greenhouse climate, crop quality post-harvest, and grafted transplant production. Attendees harvested tomatoes and assessed the quality of their crops during the afternoon lab. The hands-on lab also included tomato grafting (hand grafting and machine grafting).
- Day 5: The final day of the course served as a review and discussion session for course attendees. A special lecture was also given by Octavio Perez Rodriguez, director of growing operations at Nature Fresh Farms.
“It meant a lot to me to teach assistant growers, students, and people who want to get into the industry during this course,” says Chieri Kubota, Ph.D., director of the OHCEAC. “I hope to see it continue in the future.”
