Cumlaude RZ best-producing long cucumber on Hawaii
Conditions on Hawaii are unique. Each island has a varied micro-climate due to rainy sides and dry sides, with mountains in the middle. Agricultural farming has changed greatly in recent years to keep up with demands from both home cooks and resort restaurant chefs. For many years, sugar was the major crop. The large burst of growth for the vegetable industry came in World War II, when locally grown produce was purchased by the US government to feed the soldiers who were stationed on Hawaii. Now, with an excess of land and labour from the closing of sugar fields and increasing demand for fresh-grown ingredients and gourmet products, growers are adapting to market changes, diversifying their production and meeting marketplace challenges.
Cumlaude
Cucumber grower Brian Hudson had a difficult task finding the right variety to fit these tropical conditions. "We started growing Cumlaude through a recommendation from Paramount Seeds (a Rijk Zwaan dealer in the USA). The trials we conducted together with Glen (Paramount) were great. Cumlaude just kept on producing and showed a 10% increase overall."
Cucumber grower Brian Hudson
Low-tech facilities
"We grow our own seedlings in seed trays, and germination with Cumlaude is fabulous. We transplant the young plants onto cow peat, 3 plants per slab. We just copied that method from other growers, but on Hawaii there's so much sunlight that we've added some extra plants. Production went up accordingly. I would say Cumlaude is a vegetative crop. Ws a relatively open plant with big, big leaves. That's just the way this variety reacts in tropical conditions. Even if I would like to change the growing habits, it wouldn't be possible. We don't have any heaters or lights, so we can't control the inside climate. That's okay; Cumlaude handles itself just fine in our low tech environment."
Retailers, grocers, restaurants and resorts
"We're really happy with the fruits as well. Quality is superb. We ship within 3 days of harvest. I know the shelf life is at least 21 days, but we sell them much sooner. You see, transport is difficult here, as the cucumbers are mainly shipped by barge. They are cooled before shipping and then shipped in cooled containers. There's no export to the mainland, and our main buyers are the big retailers, smaller groceries, restaurants and resorts on Hawaii, Maui and the other islands. The cucumbers are nicely shaped, a good length and heavily ribbed. Crooked fruits are sold to a company that makes cucumber juice. One retailer sells the fruits in packages of 3, wanting a weight of 2.75 pounds, so that's the weight were targeting. Our 2.5 acres of Cumlaude produce roughly 3,000 pounds of cucumbers a day."
Source: Chain magazine Rijk Zwaan
For more information:
Rijk Zwaan
Email: [email protected]
www.rijkzwaan.com
