What separates the commercial cucumber types?

Fruit length and mass. Long, midi, mini and snack are pack formats with their own cultivars, fruit count, picking labour and price, sharing one cucumber climate recipe.

Why is a cucumber project specified against a named cultivar rather than a type label?

The type categories have drifted as breeding has moved, so a label alone no longer identifies a product. A named cultivar fixes fruit size, count and pack format, which is what the house, the labour plan and the pack line are dimensioned for.

Crops · Fruiting vegetable

Cucumber.

Fast, hungry, and unforgiving of a slow climate.

Grow cucumbers under glass The varieties

What it loses, it does not get back

Cucumber is eaten raw and cold, and nearly all of it is water. That is what the crop is for rather than what is missing from it. The fruit is bought for freshness and for texture, and for the light load of potassium and vitamin C that comes with it.

Water is also the whole of what it loses. From the moment it is cut, the fruit gives moisture back to the air, and nothing further down the chain puts it back. Wrapping slows that. Cold slows it. Neither reverses it, so every day between the plant and the plate comes off the fruit’s condition.

Distance is therefore counted in days rather than in kilometres. A crop grown near the people who eat it reaches them while it is still firm, and a cucumber that arrives firm is one that gets eaten instead of thrown out at the end of the week.

Nutrition facts

Cucumber, with peel, raw

Per 100 g

Energy: 15 kcal
Fat: 0.11 g
Carbohydrate: 3.63 g
Sugars: 1.67 g
Fiber: 0.5 g
Protein: 0.65 g
Sodium: 2 mg
Potassium: 147 mg
Vitamin C: 2.8 mg

Source: USDA FoodData Central, FDC 168409

Which cucumber?
The commercial classes.

Frequent picking. Consistent fruit grade. The class you sell decides the plant load, the harvest rhythm and the house.

Long Cucumbers

Long cucumber is the classic Dutch glasshouse cucumber, sold by the piece to a tight length and straightness grade.

Midi Cucumbers

Midi cucumber is a separate pack format with its own cultivars, fruit count and picking labour.

Mini Cucumbers

Mini cucumber is picked often, and pick frequency shapes the layout of the house.

Snack Cucumbers

Snack cucumber runs a short cycle, which makes scheduling the design question.

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.

What the crop needs

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.

What separates the varieties

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.

The greenhouse behind cucumbers