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  • From: Thamnophis <thamnophis AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] pruning cukes--pro and con
  • Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 23:17:34 -0500

How are you trellising in the tunnel Andy?

Joe

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 9:33 PM, Andy Fellenz <artisanfarms AT gmail.com> wrote:
> Richard,
>
> It really depends upon your space available, labor utilization and marketing
> goals as to whether it is worthwhile. For your plain jane American cukes
> like Marketmore, Straight 8 and General Lee It is a lot cheaper to grow
> cukes in the field and sell the good ones while culling the rest.  For the
> designer cukes with expensive seed the straight economics start to move
> towards High Tunnel production.
>
> In my case, I don't have the space for extensive plantings, want early
> cukes, prefer to keep my small crew busy  when it is too wet to work in the
> field rather than sending them home, want to rotate crops in my high tunnels
> all of which have led me to trellising and high tunnel production.  Last
> year, I end up with very few culls with the trellised cukes (almost every
> cuke is straight and uniformly colored) and picked several hundred pounds a
> week from ~320 row ft. for 9-13 weeks. Additionally, after the third week of
> picking no bending is required to get the cukes as they are well off the
> ground.
>
> I grow the cukes from May thru at least Labor Day and sometimes go until the
> 2nd week of September when the plants are pulled and the house is either put
> into a cover crop or a round of late fall/early winter greens.  I start
> harvesting before the end of June.  Last year I spent a little over $700 on
> labor for trellising and pruning and yielded several thousand pounds of
> cucumbers from ~1,000 square feet of a high tunnel.
>
> Andy
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 8:06 PM, Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Andy
>> Can you give us hard numbers?  Plant to pound production or row foot to
>> pound production?
>> I simply do row beds and mulch with straw.  I plant four to eight
>> successive plantings and do zero maintenance other than harvest and cull
>> dead plants.  I am curious if the return if worth the effort in your type
>> of
>> growing.
>> Thanks for any additional details.
>> Richard Stewart
>> Carriage House Farm
>> North Bend, Ohio
>> An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1855
>> (513) 967-1106
>> http://www.carriagehousefarmllc.com
>> rstewart AT zoomtown.com
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