Cucumber.

Fast, hungry, and unforgiving of a slow climate

Cucumber grows faster than any other fruiting vegetable in the glasshouse, and that speed is the commercial argument for it. Fruit sets and fills in days rather than weeks, so a house can turn several crops in a year and respond to a market rather than committing to one long cycle. The same speed is the risk: the crop expresses a climate error almost immediately, and there is little time to correct a stalled or overloaded plant before it shows in the grade.

The plant is grown on substrate and carried on a high wire, like tomato, but its demand profile is sharper. Transpiration is high, the fruit is mostly water, and the plant will abort loads it cannot carry. Humidity control and irrigation capacity therefore matter more than they do on a slower crop, and the climate system is sized for peaks rather than averages.

The commercial types are separated by fruit length and mass — long, midi, mini and snack — and those categories have drifted over time as breeding has moved. A label alone does not identify a product any more, which is why a project is specified against a named cultivar rather than a category. The type decides pack format, picking labour and price, and each of those is planned for the crop actually being grown.

DutchGreenhouses® designs the structure, climate, screening and irrigation around the cucumber type, its cycle and the local climate, so the house can carry the crop’s peak demand rather than its average. Get in touch to plan a cucumber greenhouse.