Garden Rocket / Arugula — DutchGreenhouses

Garden rocket is the annual plant grown for fast production of a broad, comparatively mild peppery leaf. It is the rocket most often grown under protection for salad packs. Wild rocket is a different genus with a finer leaf and a stronger flavour, and specifications that say only rocket do not distinguish between them.

What the crop needs

The crop is short-cycle and fast, and it is cut young. Flavour intensity and leaf size both move with growing speed, so the climate that produces the fastest crop is not automatically the one that produces the leaf a buyer specified. Which of the two is being grown decides the growing system, and that decision comes before the house is laid out.

What the greenhouse has to do

Rocket is fast, and speed is the design case. The crop reaches saleable size quickly and passes out of it just as quickly, so the house turns many times a year and the value sits in how reliably each turn clears. Sowing, climate and harvest are planned as one batch, and the pack line has to be ready when the floor is.

Which rocket is being grown decides the rest. Garden rocket and wild rocket differ in leaf form, growth rate and flavour, and a pack specification naming only rocket does not settle it. The system follows from the answer — density, harvest method and whether the crop is cut once or cut and regrown all change with the plant, and all of them are laid into the building.

DutchGreenhouses® designs the structure, climate, screening and irrigation around the leaf actually being grown and the pack it is destined for, rather than around a shared common name. Get in touch to discuss an arugula project.

Baby spinach

Harvested young, into washed salad and convenience packs.

Lettuce

A short cycle repeated all year, where the head is the unit sold.

Hydroponics

Substrate growing with drip supply and drain recirculation.

Climate

Heating, cooling, humidity control and carbon dioxide dosing.

The mild leaf has less to lose

Garden rocket is the broader and milder of the two plants sold as rocket, and mildness sets the margin it works inside. Only the pepper that survives the journey is tasted. On a leaf that started softer there is less of it to spare, and a long chain turns a specified flavour into a vague one.

Cut young, the leaf is thin, and thin leaf wilts. It goes into mixed packs where one tired component decides how the whole bag is judged. Rocket is rarely the only leaf in the pack, and it is often the first one to go.

Speed is the case for growing it close. The crop reaches saleable size quickly and the house turns many times a year, so supply can be matched to a packing schedule instead of a shipping schedule. Cut in the morning and packed the same day, the leaf arrives with its pepper and its structure intact, which is the product the specification described.

Nutrition facts

Arugula, raw

Per 100 g

Energy: 25 kcal
Fat: 0.66 g
Carbohydrate: 3.65 g
Sugars: 2.05 g
Fiber: 1.6 g
Protein: 2.58 g
Sodium: 27 mg
Potassium: 369 mg
Vitamin C: 15 mg

Source: USDA FoodData Central, FDC 169387

Questions

Garden rocket, asked and answered

Is wild rocket covered by this page?

No. Wild rocket is a different genus with a finer leaf and a stronger flavour. It grows differently and is specified separately.

What should a pack specification state?

Which rocket, the leaf size wanted and whether the crop is cut once or cut and regrown. Those three settle the density, the harvest method and the system.

What does a fast crop ask of the greenhouse?

Turnover and evenness. The house turns many times a year, so the value is in how reliably each batch clears together, which puts the weight on uniform light, air movement and water across the whole floor.

From the knowledge base