- NASGA Leader’s Maryland Farm Focuses on U-Pick and Education
By Karen Gentry
Managing Editor
Phil Johnson got his start in farming as a grain farmer who rented out land wherever he could find it. He then purchased a farm for raising hogs and strawberries. Today, Johnson’s Walnut Springs Farm in Elkton, Md., features u-pick strawberries and asparagus and includes educational tours.
“In 1975 I decided to buy the farm that we were renting and go into a total confinement hog operation and strawberries,” Johnson said.
On their 30 acres he kept the hogs and strawberries until 1975, when he moved his hog operation to Iowa. Today, Johnson’s daughter and son-in-law in Iowa are his partners in the hog operation, leaving him to handle his u-pick strawberry and asparagus operation in Maryland.
Walnut Springs Farm was one of the stops on the recent North American Strawberry Growers Association (NASGA) summer tour. Tour participants showed a particular interest in Johnson’s strawberries grown on plastic, which he started in 1992.
Johnson now has four acres of on plastic and four on matted row. Johnson used a raised bedder/fumigator he bought in North Carolina to grow the Chandler variety for three years but he did not get the necessary yield compared with the matted row.
Because they weren’t getting the increased yield they should have, he started experimenting with bare root through the plastic instead of using plugs that were grown in the greenhouse he had at the time.
Johnson is currently experimenting with two new varieties – Dar Select and Eros – from Nourse Farms. Dar Select was released this past sale season while Eros will be released for the next sales season.
“Our main varieties on plastics are Jewel and Seneca. Seneca is supposed to be mid-season and Jewel late season. I haven’t found an early one yet,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s farm also includes 1.5 acres of asparagus – all for u-pick. Customers pay on the honor system, about $1 per pound and come early in the morning for the best pickings.
“We’ve been doing that (growing asparagus) for 15 years.” Johnson said. His oldest asparagus field was planted in 1988, and he planted a new high-density field three years ago. Johnson’s original asparagus planting was Centennial, which was the first hybrid developed by Rutgers University. The newer planting is Jersey Knight, with 42-inch row spacing, 18 inches apart in the row.
He said he is thinking about using Haygrove Tunnels to go to some high value crops where he can control the climate a bit. He may grow strawberries under the tunnels and double crop with melons.
U-pick customers come from what Johnson calls the “high-rent district,” including Wilmington, Del., and Newark, N.J., “We have more Delaware names on the mailing list than we do Maryland,” Johnson said.
“We never tell anybody what the price is. We pretty much set our own prices. Demand has been such we’ve never had to run any specials,” he said.
They pride themselves on weed-free fields for u-pick, and they will close up if weather affects the berries.
“This year we only picked half of our acreage because of weather. It was the first time in 20 years that actually happened,” he said.
All of Johnson’s pumpkins are given out on school tours. His school tours are educational and are run by his niece, Jenny Arter.
“We took a different path than what most people have. We wanted nothing to do with Halloween so our school program is strictly educational,” Johnson said.
They developed and built a big strawberry slide and a dinosaur that is actually a goat walk in order to cater to their younger customers.
They revamped a room that used to be a hog nursery and developed learning stations similar to those used in some children’s museums.
Their school groups and daycare groups attract 5,000 people annually, although Johnson said he had hoped to be up to 10,000 visitors by this time – their fourth or fifth year in operation with school tours. Johnson said school tours have been down in the last two years, and the sniper situation in the East did not help.
On the NASGA tour, Johnson showed growers simple tools for strawberry planting. One that he shared is made out of 1/2-inch PVC pipe and is used to push the bare root plant into the ground.
“One I’m going to use next year is like a giant dibble stick made out of oak wood. It seems to work better than plastic. It’s thinner and give you more contact with the soil,” Johnson said.
He also showed growers a hole puncher that is used to space the plant. Two wheels with a sickle section welded on cut a hole into the plastic; the puncher moves across the bed so growers know where to put the plant, Johnson said.
Johnson’s land is Class 3 land, which means there are major erosion problems and variation in the soil. Johnson said the local conservation district started in the Chesapeake Bay in 1975, and his operation was one of the first farm programs under the district. He takes part in the conservation plan and tries to keep the field on contour the best he can while still being able to farm.
Walnut Springs Farm includes five acres of ground that has never been used, some of it a little too wet, some too dry, Johnson said.
“We’re thinking about going to blueberries on those five acres. It’s the only thing we can think of to utilize that ground,” he said.
“There’s five acres of grass that’s used for nothing but buffer zones,” Johnson said.
This was the sixth annual summer tour organized by NASGA. Johnson – in his second term on NASGA’s board of directors – coordinated tour stops in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. After setting the schedule of appropriate stops, Johnson drove the tour ahead of time to check on details.
The group was able to see the high tunnels in operation at Cedar Meadow Farm in Holtwood, Pa. and Funk’s Farm Market in Millersville, Pa. Johnson said that for many strawberry growers the NASGA tour is their only vacation of the year. Next year’s summer tour is planned for Quebec City in Canada.
