Belgian tomato grower Ben Nuyens from Truyenberg Nursery harvested it's first crop quite early: on the 20th of December. "Maybe a bit early, but that is what we have been used to the last few years," Nuyens said. "We planted on October the 15th and the plants started rooting in the coir after 3½ weeks."
Strong plants & great quality crop near the shortest day of the year at 20 December
Nuyens is growing his 13 hectare of hydroponic tomatoes not in the conventional rockwool substrate, but is using coir. "Five years ago we changed to using coir-substrates, due to the big amount of recycle costs that we had to deal with when using rockwool. That's the main reason that we made the switch. But after the first year we noticed there were more benefits for us, so we became really into coir by the years."
Just planted the big plants at the 15th of October 2012
"The coir-substrates just do the trick for us, we are really a fan of it. We even reused it one crop cycle without any problems, and we didn't even steam it."
Rooted through the whole bag already on November the 8th
Nowadays Nuyens is using coir-substrate supplied by Dutch Plantin. "The coir is very manageable," Ben said. "That's one of the reasons we like coir more and more. It's just really pliant in our way of growing. For example: When the coir was installed in the greenhouse, we just dripped it with four litres of water before we started planting. That was just the right amount for us to start planting, so we didn't loose any time in our crop cycle."
According to Ben, another benefit compared to rockwool is less amount of botrytis pressure. "We are dealing with less botrytis in our greenhouse since we are using coir. Production is equal or better as well, but for a grower, that's a natural requirement.
For more information:
Wim Roosen
Dutch Plantin Coir India Pvt Ltd
Tel: +31 610 569 218
Email: wim.roosen@dutchplantin.com
www.dutchplantin.com