Capsicum growers: LaSpina leads the field

THE LaSpinas’ capsicum farm is an exercise in efficiency from planting to picking, writes FIONA MYERS.

Bedding in: Joe LaSpina with capsicum seedlings in plastic-covered beds. Some 40,000 are planted in just six hours. Picture: Chloe Smith.

A HANKY tied around the wrist used to be the reminder that the sprinklers were turned on in the seedling shed.

Things have progressed for the LaSpina family company, which is now one of the biggest capsicum growers in Victoria.

The LaSpina family started with a small crop of capsicums at the same time as they were still growing tobacco.

Such was its success that it soon became the main focus of their horticultural enterprise run on the Ovens River flats at Whorouly.

Joe LaSpina, his wife Kim and brother Raimond run the farm with the brothers’ parents, Sam and Mary, and combine growing capsicums with kiwi fruit as well as running cattle.

But it is the capsicum that’s king. This is a self-made business in more ways than one.

The LaSpinas grow their own seedlings to plant and even custom built their own planting machine in the quest to become efficient growers. Each year, they grow about 20ha of capsicums.

With a crop of 44 tonnes a hectare, it means they produce about two million capsicums a year.

SEED DEMONS

SOWING of seeds in the greenhouse starts in September with four sowings, finishing in October. Transplanting starts in November and finishes in the first week of January.

Each greenhouse holds about 100,000 seedlings and there are six greenhouses where sowing is one week apart.

This allows transplanting to take place over a number of weeks, meaning the resulting crop is also ready to harvest over a period of about 100 days.

All the seedlings are watered every hour thanks to an electric timing system, which replaced the hanky some years ago.

“Dad used to turn the sprinklers on to water the seedlings but there were no timers then, so we used to tie a hanky round his hand so he would not forget,” Joe said.

“Things have moved along a bit since then.”

Joe said they spent about $70,000 a year on seeds alone to grow about 600,000 seedlings.

With about 150 seeds weighing just 1g, it is an intricate business, but the La Spinas have a machine that puts a spec­ially sourced seedling mix from Joe Faranda at Greencrop at Werribee into the pyramid shaped planting trays, plants the seed and then puts vermiculite on top to hold the moisture.

The seedlings are planted, then spend three days in a cool room where the temperature is lifted to 25C, to kick start their growth.

Joe said they could source out their seedling production to an outside nursery but there were good reasons for doing it themselves.

“We used to grow our own tobacco seedlings so we know how to do it,” he said.

“It is also cheaper to do it ourselves, plus the plants are acclimatised to our conditions so we believe the perform better.”

PLANT POWER

THE seedlings are then planted direct into the paddock by a machine designed by Joe’s father Sam.

The self-propelled machine, which needs four operators, allows about 40,000 seedlings to be planted in just six hours.

The seedlings are planted in two rows in each seed bed, which are covered in plastic before the sowing begins.

Dripper tape is also placed in the beds before sowing, and is able to deliver 1.2 litres of water every 30cm in the row. Fertiliser is also delivered through the dripper lines, with the plants watered once a day.

That results in each hectare of capsicums using about 2.5 megalitres of water to grow 44 tonnes of crop — not a bad return on the water used, Joe reckons.

This year, they have laid 113km of dripper tape and plastic to grow their crop.

The LaSpinas concentrate on producing green capsicums, and allow only about 20 per cent of their crop to turn red.

Joe said while the climatic conditions — hours of sunlight and warmth — were almost perfect for growing green capsicums, it was more difficult to produce red capsicums.

“We know we can produce high quality green capsicums but have not found the right variety yet to produce big volumes of the same quality red, so we are sticking mainly to what we do best,” Joe said.

But that is not to say they aren’t always trying out new varieties to see if they can find a superior one. Each year they factor in at least a dozen new varieties in their own mini-research trial to see how emerging varieties perform under their conditions.

Moisture levels are monitored by a tensiometer, but Joe is also a big believer in the shovel method of checking soil moisture.

“The way to make sure you get a good, high quality crop is to ensure that the plants are never under moisture stress,” he said.

QUALITY PICK

PICKING starts in February and runs for 100 days.

The criteria for picking is subjective. The team of 12 to 20 staff employed for the season is a mix of backpackers, locals and seasonal workers who are instructed what to pick.

“We hand pick the capsicums, which must be a med­ium size,” Joe said.

The capsicums are picked in the morning, from 6am until 1pm. They are picked, taken to the packing shed, washed, sorted and packed into boxes.

They are transported that night to markets in Sydney and Melbourne, with most ultimately ending up in the major supermarkets.

Pickers go across the crop between two and four times, picking the right-sized capsicums but leaving those that are smaller.

Even with those passes, up to one million capsicums are not picked each year as they are smaller or are not perfect.

This, Joe said, had taken a significant margin from their business.

Imported capsicums were now being used in manufacturing (pizza toppings, tuna additives, and even in making paprika) which meant there was no market for their lesser-quality capsicums.

For the challenges presented, it’s clear the LaSpinas love knowing the quality of capsicums that leave their farm every day for three months bound for consumers across the eastern states.

“We know the quality of what we produce is the best we can do, and we farm in an idyllic environment,” Joe said.