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IN THE DEEP FREEZE of a Nebraska winter, the crunch of a garden salad can take you away from piles of snow and layers of clothing. Suddenly, taste buds have your mind savoring sunny memories and warm breezes while you unwind on a thick, grassy carpet at a summer picnic down by the riverside.
Dig into that iceberg lettuce and bite into a fresh and juicy tomato or a crunchy cucumber in early January right off the vine grown in the frozen tundra of dear ol’ Nebraska land?
It’s summer in January here in O’Neill, and green thumbs in greenhouses come in handy at the self-proclaimed Irish capital of Nebraska, where the world’s largest shamrock and blarney stone both reside. There aren’t any leprechauns magically growing these fresh winter tomatoes and cucumbers, because they’re being produced by futuristic farmer Marv Fritz and his Danish grower guru at Garden Fresh Vegetables, the most dominant harvester of virtually year-round tomatoes in the state.
Welcome to the jungle. Step inside the land of glass that covers a span of 24 football fields and you’ll feel as if O’Neill has suddenly become part of the tropical rainforest.
Dozens of employees reach out for the crimson crop growing from 50-foot vines, surrounded by rows of giant green plants with leaves so big they seem to sprout from Jack and the Beanstalk.
Fritz may not have hired any leprechauns in his wondrous winter garden of tomatoes, but he does have his Great Dane, 60-year-old Ole Sommersted, who has been growing tomatoes since he was 3 years old at his family greenhouse in Denmark.
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| Garden Fresh Vegetables’ indoor tomato plants tower over employee Andres Suastigui as he picks a late fall harvest. |
“Ole probably knows as much about tomatoes and horticulture as anyone in the country,” said Fritz of his head grower, who has also harvested praise from the University of Nebraska. “A professor at UNL once told me that he thought if Ole walked on campus, the knowledge base of that department would be doubled.”
This O’Neill business is almost literally home for Ole since he lives about 200 yards south of the plant, and he also has a very capable horticultural sidekick in his daughter, Kirsa Sommersted. Ole joined forces with Fritz just when this company looked like it was going south, and it was the classic case of turning lemons into lemonade, or better yet, pasty tomatoes into sweet pasta sauce.
The greenhouse tomato venture began in 2003 under another company name when Fritz says he was promised by his partners that he wouldn’t even have to worry about getting involved in a simple turnkey operation. Instead, this business group turned the key and left, leaving their consultant Ole behind. Ole decided to stand his ground and help Fritz dig out of the hole that the O’Neill businessman says left him and his bank both going broke.
“I was sold a bill of goods by that first group,” Fritz said. “Their business plan was completely unworkable and its possibilities overstated. When it ended up in a heap, we ended up with Ole. Thank God.”
In 2007, Fritz took over as operations manager of the company that was rebuilt and renamed Garden Fresh Vegetables. But the production really grew in 2010 when the 10-acre O’Neill greenhouse expanded to 24 acres by moving a pair of 600-by-600-foot facilities on 70 semi-trailer loads from former greenhouse ventures in Gothenburg and Minden.
“Greenhouses are like a giant Lego set,” Fritz said. “They just piece together.”
The glass village’s year-round sales in six states delivers nearly 10 million pounds of tomatoes, with 60 percent of its production in beef steak tomatoes, 34 percent in vine tomatoes, and the rest in mini-Roma tomatoes and seedless “English” cucumbers.
The indoor Garden Fresh even outgrows all other outdoor competitors in the state, and you’d have head south to Arizona and southwest Texas before you find a bigger greenhouse.
