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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] cooler

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  • From: John Hendrickson <jhendric AT wisc.edu>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] cooler
  • Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:13:55 -0500

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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