Fruit Growing

Our Process

Bardenhagen Farms has numerous growing practices we follow.  We grow crops in a sustainable way focusing on maintaining good soil health.

We use the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) method to our management of pests and disease to minimize applications. We have a scouting service through Hort Systems that comes by and monitors each block for pests and disease every week during the growing season, who then makes recommendations that meet all various requirements. 

We are a licensed applicator under the Michigan Department of Ag and Rural Development Department.

Growing Practices

We do soil and leaf tests on the various blocks/fields on a routine schedule and then make applications of nutrients based on these tests and the recommendations of an agronomist consultant who focuses on soil health.

We are certified by the Michigan Agricultural Environment Program  (MAEAP) that goes over all our practices on our farmstead, cropping systems and forest land to see whether we are following the best General Agricultural Practices (GAP) to protect the environment.

For Food Safety, our harvest workers practices are audited by two 3rd party audit firms each year. We utilize the Primus GFS and USDA GAP organizations for these audits. We also meet the Federal Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) requirements.

We do all this to provide you the customer with healthy tasty high quality produce to enjoy!

Please see some of the pictures of some of the production and harvesting activities on the farm on this page.

Frequently Asked Questions

• When is the farm stand open?  July to Nov as weather permits.  For shopping the farm stand 8 am-8 pm daily.  For on-line order pickup 9 am to 6 pm daily.
• Are you a U-Pick farm?  No, we have the fruit picked by our workers.
• Are your products organic?  Our fruit is not organically certified.  We utilize IPM (Integrated Pest Management) in our growing practices which focuses on crop scouting and minimizing pesticide applications.
• Do you follow FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) guidelines?  Yes we do, they are incorporated into our Food Safety Plan which is 3rd party audited by Primus GFS and USDA GAP. You may download our Primus GFS & USDA GAP certificates.