What started out as a bold experiment in mechanized cucumber production in 2005 has now become a dependable production system for one North Carolina Coastal Plain farmer.
Charles Harden of Windsor, N.C., now grows 600 acres of cucumbers half in the spring and half in the fall and harvests them with a Raven Pickle Harvester. It features an oversized eliminator that sorts out oversized cucumbers and puts them back on the field with a conveyor belt. And it destroys the crop as it goes over it.
It took three years to get to the point where we were comfortable with this system, but it has worked out real well for us, he says.
Cucumbers are quick in regards to growth, he says. And because you can grow two crops in a year, you get an early cash flow as well as your normal cash flow for your fall crops. I havent found cucumbers too difficult to grow. But it does require intense management, and timeliness is very important.
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