Tucked just north of Wilmington, the Horticultural Crops Research Station at Castle Hayne sits in the warm, sandy soils of New Hanover County – a landscape uniquely suited to small fruit research. With 111 acres split between two sites, the station supports one of the largest public blueberry-breeding programs in the world while also hosting research on strawberries, muscadine grapes, ornamentals, cucumbers, watermelon, sea oats and more. But if there is one thing that defines the research station in Castle Hayne, it’s blueberries.
The station has the same name as the agricultural research station in Clinton. Both are named Horticultural Crops Research Station, so they’re often differentiated by referring to the location – Clinton or Castle Hayne.
Castle Hayne’s warm climate, long growing season, high organic-matter soils and historically low pH make it an ideal environment for small fruit breeding and disease research. It is also the southernmost research station in the NCDA&CS system. Superintendent John Garner has been with N.C. State University since 2008 and began managing the Castle Hayne farm around 2011. In that time, he has seen the work expand, diversify and even reinvent itself as the needs of growers and researchers evolve.
A Station Built Around Blueberries
The Castle Hayne station operates on two separate tracts of land roughly seven miles apart: a 60-acre main station, home to greenhouses, labs, offices and most crops other than blueberries; and a 50-acre blueberry farm, where the soil is ideal for the fruit’s unique needs.
“Blueberries require a completely different soil type than almost any other property,” Garner explained. “Everywhere I can grow blueberries, we’re growing blueberries and I don’t have any more to give [the researcher who leads our blueberry breeding program].”
That full-time blueberry breeder is one of several N.C. State faculty based at Castle Hayne. Their presence surprises many people, Garner said, because not every research station hosts resident faculty.
“There are two researchers based here from N.C. State’s Horticulture Science and two from Entomology and Plant Pathology. One of them is 100% blueberries. The other two are probably 75-plus percent blueberries,” he said. “Most of their responsibility falls in blueberries.”
For good reason: commercial blueberry production in North Carolina is concentrated within an hour’s drive of the station.
“Instead of being on campus and having to get out of Raleigh every day, they come here every day for work.”
Trying Something New: Blueberries in Pots
After decades of planting blueberries in the ground, the breeding program has hit a limit. There is simply no unallocated blueberry-suitable soil left. So the station is trying something new. Garner described how they converted a former gravel parking area at the main station into an experimental growing area.
“We’re putting the right kind of soil in pots, and we’re putting those pots on this gravel yard, and we’re growing blueberries here at the main station for the first time in outdoor conditions in this kind of prepared media, artificial dirt,” Garner said.
The goal isn’t commercial fruit production. It’s to give the breeder more space to grow seedling plants needed for variety development.
“Those blueberries did very well this summer,” he said, but the system comes with challenges. “It’s much more labor intensive. It’s much more money intensive. You’re having to irrigate them much more because it’s not in the ground where it can get access to soil moisture easily.”
Still, the early results are promising, and for a breeding program that needs room to grow, innovation is essential.
A New Direction: IR-4 Research Comes to Castle Hayne
The second major development in the past year involves a whole new line of work.
“One of the faculty members from Horticulture Science relocated here. He was based in Raleigh, but now he’s based here, and he is a researcher in the IR-4 program.”
IR-4 is a partnership with USDA, EPA and FDA. It exists to help small-acreage or “specialty crop” growers get access to pesticides that would otherwise be too expensive for companies to register.
“Registering a pesticide to use on a crop is very expensive. The private companies can’t afford to jump through the legal hurdles to get it labeled on [smaller crops like] stevia, for example. So the IR-4 program steps in, does some of the regulatory work, so that the regulatory folks have some data to go by to say, yes, this is safe to use on stevia or spinach or basil [or another small crop], and then that allows the farmer to then start using that pesticide legally.”
Because the IR-4 researcher is now based at Castle Hayne, the station’s crop list has expanded dramatically.
“Since he’s been here, we’ve grown cabbage, stevia, spinach, basil. We’re fixing to plant canola,” Garner said.
These crops supplement the station’s established portfolio of small fruits and ornamentals, giving farmers across the state more tools to manage weeds, insects and diseases in specialty crops.
Two Sites, Many Crops and a Small but Mighty Staff
Despite the breadth of research, the station’s core team is relatively small. Garner splits his time between Castle Hayne and the nearby Williamsdale field lab.
“I have three full-time employees that work under me with seasonal help brought in during busy periods. The blueberry breeder alone often employs five to six or seven people – maybe even eight or nine. A lot of them are UNCW students,” Garner said. “On a busy day, there can be me and my staff and then all the other four or five professors that are here, and then a handful of other people.”
From blueberry field days to muscadine workshops and beach-grass evaluations to pollinator habitat studies, the people who work at the Castle Hayne station help the research reach far beyond its acreage.