Growing Tomatoes Differently

This came up on Facebook as a Memory from six years go, so I thought I'd comment on it.

In another lifetime, I worked in a Glasshouse growing tomatoes, not just ordinary tomatoes, hydroponic tomatoes. I treated myself to a Horticulture Course, although it didn't turn out to be what I had originally planned. My intention was to learn how to properly do Plant Propagation, but there was no course for that when I started, so got shunted into Certificate 3 in Production Horticulture, a somewhat harder course more suited to Market Gardening.

I didn't let it put me off though and I'm sort of glad it worked out the way it did, because I ended up working in the TAFE College Glasshouse, a $1.5M structure only two years old at the time. The course included tractor driving and Ploughing, Weed Spraying and a myriad of other activities all the way to Irrigation.

I aced most subjects and wasn't really stressed doing it, the whole thing gave me a buzz. During the course, I spent a lot of the year working on the tomato and capsicum crops and became quite good at what I was doing. When the year ended, I was approached to join the crew at TAFE and become a Crop Technician, eventually assisting with the training of three Trainees, plus contact to lots of students.

I worked here for the combined total of 7 years up until the day we decided to sell our house in Cranbourne and moved to Maffra.