[Market-farming] cooler

John Hendrickson jhendric at wisc.edu
Mon Mar 30 15:13:55 EDT 2009


I am guessing most of the people on this list realize that hydro-cooling 
usually refers to submerging crops in cold water rather than "gently 
spraying" but cannot stop myself from posting a clarification. For 
example, only by dunking lettuce heads are you going to effectively 
remove field heat. There are certainly many crops for which 
hydro-cooling/submersion is a bad idea (onions, basil, tomatoes...). -John

> "Some crops are “hydro-cooled” which for us means they are gently 
> sprayed off with cold well-water. If you have helpers, it’s really 
> important to alert them to how much damage they can do directing a 
> high pressure stream of water at your crops! Stronger crops like 
> heartier Kale and collards… turnips, carrots, and beets might get 
> sprayed down, but we don’t do that for lighter greens, lettuce, basil, 
> cilantro, or other crops that might hold the water, causing other 
> types of decay problems.
>
> Instead, we make sure they are packed lightly into harvest crates, and 
> we spread the crates out only one layer deep on the cooler floor to 
> maximize their access to the cold air. They stay like that for the 30 
> minutes it takes us to come up with the next trailer load of veggies – 
> then they are stacked up or placed on wire mesh shelves and the new 
> load of veggies are spread out on the cooler floor."
>


-- 
John Hendrickson
Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1535 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
608-265-3704
www.cias.wisc.edu



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