Painting the greenhouse red
AS it stands, it is a sea of green - but within three months, Thanet Earth will be transformed into a ripe, red carpet of juicy tomatoes.
The super-size greenhouse company planted a staggering 750,000 tomato plants just before Christmas, marking the beginning of a major new industry on the isle.
Workers from Thanet and specialists from Holland planted row after row of eight species of the red fruit including elegance, sunstream and piccola, a sweet cherry tomato, in Britain's biggest glasshouse business.
Thanet has officially taken centre stage as the largest producer of tomatoes in England. This is expected to create more than 500 jobs, bringing fresh hope to islanders.
Gert van Strallen Kaaij, tomato grower and managing director at Kaaij Redstar, one of the companies behind Thanet Earth, was excited about the first round of planting.
He said: "Putting the crop in place is always a potentially difficult time and although the weather was very cold, it has given us some fantastic winter light levels and the plants are growing incredibly quickly.
"At this early stage tomato plants grow by more than 30cm every week which means we have to manually crop train every plant every week just to keep up."
Motorists passing the site may have noticed three new cylindrical structures on the skyline.
These are the hot water towers and between them they hold enough hot water to keep the three massive greenhouses warm enough for tomatoes to thrive whatever the weather outside.
Managing director Steve McVickers said: "In the first weeks of January we'll have a number of vacancy details posted on our website.
"We have been delighted with the interest being expressed in work at the site.
"We've received literally hundreds of letters so far and we'll be going through these and the latest applications as each job role comes online."
The tomatoes will be ready to be picked in March.
