SEMO starts work on new greenhouse

Wesley Mueller walked across a muddy patch of ground Friday that will soon be home to a new 11,000-square-foot greenhouse at Southeast Missouri State University with enough room to advance the growing field of biotechnology research.

Mueller ignored the mud, envisioning the benefits of an expanded horticulture program that will be possible with a glass greenhouse that will be twice the size of the existing facility and also have an 1,800-square-foot work building -- or "head house," as it's called in the greenhouse business -- a 20-space parking lot and an entrance road.

One-third of the new greenhouse will be dedicated to biotechnology research, said Mueller, chairman of the university's agriculture department, which administers the horticulture program.

"We are looking to grow tobacco for proteins for cancer drugs," he said.

Mueller said the university's horticulture program also increasingly will focus on urban horticulture such as golf course turf management and landscaping.

Different types of retaining walls could be set up on site as part of landscaping studies, he said.

A horticulturist who is a turf expert has been hired. As of July, the university then will have two horticulturists as it looks to expand a horticulture program that currently has 40 students majoring in it.

"It will be the nicest greenhouse I have ever been associated with," said James McCrimmon, Southeast's new horticulturist. He is leaving Louisiana State University for this job, which will start this month.

McCrimmon said turf management is increasingly important thanks to the growing number of golf courses. "That is where a lot of the jobs are," he said.

Site work for the $750,000 greenhouse project -- funded with private donations and a $200,000 federal grant -- began about a month ago on a vacant tract of land just south of Bertling Street and west of the Abe Stuber Track and Field Complex that in the past has served largely as a place to dump dirt and limbs.

Completed by August

The contractor, Nip Kelley Construction, so far has worked on installing drainage pipe as it carves out an entrance road off Bertling Street near the intersection with Old Sprigg Street Road.

The new greenhouse should be completed by August, Mueller said. It is being prefabricated by Nexus Corp. and will then be set up on the site. "It's kind of like building a Tinker Toy," he said.

The new greenhouse will replace the one built in 1979 on New Madrid Street west of the Show Me Center.

There's little room to maneuver through the flowers and foliage in the existing greenhouse. Potting soil and stacks of plastic pots crowd the front entrance, which doubles as a sales area and even employee break room.

The new greenhouse will have roof vents that will allow outside air in to provide better ventilation, said greenhouse manager Denise Pingel.

"It will be a lot easier to get heat out of the building," she said. Electric fans hang from pipes in the existing greenhouse to help cool the building in the summertime.

Room to grow

There's so little space at the current greenhouse that the university grows thousands of mums in pots on the gravel parking lot each year.

Pingel said there will be more room at the new greenhouse site for growing plants both indoors and outside. Horticulture companies donate the plants so they can be tested as to how well they grow in this climate. The university then ends up selling the plants, such as mums and poinsettias, which generates about $25,000 in income annually.

Pingel said the new greenhouse will have space to grow more plants, which should generate even more revenue.

The greenhouse project is just the first phase of improvements planned for the 17-acre site. Mueller hopes within the next three to five years to oversee construction of a biotechnology lab building and an arboretum with landscaped walkways, and demonstration putting greens and fairways for turf management studies.

Mueller said money has yet to be raised for such improvements. He hopes the university can tap into state and federal funding.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123