Producing
Greenhouse Cucumbers at Cold Spring Brook Farm
T.
Jude Boucher
Agricultural Educator - Commercial Vegetable Crops
University of Connecticut
Tom
Nielson and Steve Bengtson
Owners/Managers
Cold Spring Brook Farm, Berlin, Connecticut
Many
of you attended the July 19, 2001 Vegetable Growers' Twilight Meeting at
Tom Nielson's and Steve Bengtson's
Cold Spring Brook Farm in Berlin, Connecticut and saw their greenhouse
cucumbers. Tom and Steve expanded their vegetable greenhouse production
because they had more customer demand for pickles and cucumbers than
they could supply. By reusing their idle greenhouses, they could meet
the demand without using more of the limited field space available on
their farm. One grower at the twilight meeting commented that he had
tried to grow greenhouse cucumbers before but found them unprofitable.
No doubt, he managed his greenhouse
cucumbers differently than Tom and Steve. They found the crop quite
profitable and the early pickles and cucumbers welcomed to their stand
by customers.
When
you visit their farm, the first thing you notice about the cucumber
operation is cucumbers growing in hanging baskets with vines hanging
down rather than trained up a trellis system. This can result in great
labor savings. Most of the baskets for this year's cucumbers were used
last year and will be used again next year. Tom claims that almost all
his plastic hanging baskets were "recycled" from ornamentals
that did not sell.
After
greenhouses are emptied of ornamentals in the spring, they are filled
with two tiers of hanging baskets on each side of the center alleyway.
Therefore, the cucumbers represent a second crop for houses that already
exist and would otherwise be empty at that time of year. The houses are
closed at night during the spring and then are kept open for the season.
The houses are heated only on exceptionally cold nights, cutting down on
heat costs. They were heated the night of the frost/freeze in early May.
The cucumbers are harvested directly from the back of a flatbed truck
that is driven through the center of the houses. Again, this reduces
labor expenses associated with harvest by eliminating ladders from the
operation. It also makes the harvest much easier on employees' backs
than harvesting field cucumbers because no bending is required.
The
hanging baskets are watered and fertilized automatically four times each
day. In the morning and evening, the irrigation system kicks on for 3
minutes at 7:00 AM and 6:00 PM. During the warmer daytime hours, they are
watered for 5 minutes at 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM. The plants are fed with a
liquid 20-20-20 starter fertilizer at planting. Later, a Plant-Tex
24-10-20 (N-P-K) formulation is used so that the cucumbers get 150 ppm of
nitrogen with each watering.
At
Cold Spring Brook Farm, they used the self-pollinating variety 'Jazzer'
for regular cucumbers early and switched to 'General Lee' (not
self-pollinating) later in the season for powdery mildew resistance.
They
also grow 'Sweet Success' for a burpless variety, and 'Cool Breeze'
(self-pollinating) and 'Eureka' for pickles. The growers made four sequential plantings, 4 to 5 weeks apart, beginning on April
7. The
plantings varied somewhat in number, but usually 150 to 200 hanging pots
were planted, to produce two full houses each time. Steve
reported that it was 6 to 7 weeks from seeding until the beginning
of harvest for each planting, regardless of outside temperatures. They
started harvesting pickles and cucumbers for their stand on May 10 and
continued throughout the season.
Tom and Steve sold their early season
pickles retail for $0.40 each or 3 for $1.00, and their late pickles for
$0.30 each or 4 for $1.00. Handlebaskets of 50 to 60 pickles each brought
$16.00 to
$20.00
early and $12.50 to $15.00 late. Late in the season, some pickles were
sold bulk for $12.00 per half bushel. They sold their early cucumbers
for $0.50 each and the late-season crop for $0.35 each and 3 for $1.00.
Handlebaskets of 15 to 20 cucumbers brought $5.00 to $6.00. Tom and Steve
raised 1,400 hanging baskets in the
greenhouses, which yielded 870 handlebaskets. They sold all the
pickles and cucumbers they could produce, including their field
production.
This was only their second season raising greenhouse
cucumbers so they feel they are still in the learning mode. Cold
Spring Brook Farm experienced a couple of problems. They fought powdery mildew in the houses from mid-July on.
Sharon Douglas at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New
Haven identified the powdery mildew species as Sphaerotheca
fuliginea.
This species may have been introduced to the crop from one of the
ornamental plants that previously occupied the houses or may have
blown in from the field. Sanitation procedures, such as making sure the
house is empty of ornamentals before starting to fill it with cucumbers
rather than mixing the crops and disinfecting used baskets prior to
planting, may help prevent
this
problem in the future.
 Powdery mildew infected even the powdery mildew
resistant variety used.
Resistance
in cucumbers generally limits the amount of tissue affected and the
number of spores produced. However,
it does not stop the disease. Tom and Steve helped suppress the disease
with applications of horticultural oil or Oxidate. Another product they
could try in the future would be AQ10 Biofungicide that contains
Ampelomyces quisqualis, a fungus that is parasitic on powdery
mildew. Unfortunately, the choice of options is slim because there are
not many products labeled for greenhouse vegetable production and even
fewer registered for powdery mildew on cucumbers in the greenhouse.
The
other major problem was wilting
of
part of the plant in some pots. At first, they believed this was
bacterial wilt associated with cucumber beetle feeding, as this pest was
a regular visitor to the houses. We were plotting a strategy of using
Admire (transplant drench application) on the hanging baskets next year
when the results from the
diagnostic lab came back negative for the presence of bacteria in the
wilted vines.
I brought a second sample to the lab to
double
check that they had not missed the diagnosis, and again it came back
negative for bacterial infection.
We
also noticed that some of the wilting vines had no visible sign of
cucumber beetle feeding, which helps eliminate bacterial wilt as a
possible culprit. This is a good example of how to use a diagnostic lab
to
save time and money by avoiding needless chores and chemicals in the
future. Obviously, there is no need
for
Admire treatments in their future production.
Another hypothesis was
that the vines on part of the plant were drying out. Tom would often
find that the cucumber tendrils would wind around and pull out the
spaghetti tubes going to the growing media in some of the individual
baskets. He would simply stick them back into the baskets during picking
operations. Upon close inspection, Dr.Douglas found that the plants
showed many cryptic signs of overwatering (not underwatering), including
a reduced root system, lack of root hairs and the presence of algae in
the baskets. The simple answer may be to reduce the watering interval by
a minute or more for each cycle. We are also waiting for the lab results
of a soluble salts test to see if the fertilizer rate requires
adjustment.
Even with the two problems
mentioned, Tom and Steve found the
crop worthwhile, profitable and a great addition to their farm
production. They kept their expenses low and figured
that most of the income from
the cucumber enterprise was profit. Expenses included the costs for
seed, growing media, a few new baskets, fertilizer, irrigation supplies,
pesticides, a little fuel and labor for planting, mixing fertilizer,
spraying and harvesting. They plan to continue and, possibly, expand
their greenhouse cucumber production in the future.
Would greenhouse
cucumbers fit in your operation?
Originally
published in Yankee
Grower Volume 3 No. 6 2001
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