so getting more yields where your cucumber starts with growing them inside a shelter
I see a lot of Growers planting them planting cukes in the field
uh because it's easier and it's less probably less time to set up but man if you get five
times more yield for the same plant I don't know why you would do it otherwise to be honest
good
so why we don't trace them outside using Stakes
is that these plants you know when they're traced well they'll grow about six six feet high
and the setup a trace system like that honestly it's complicated you know those
shelters they're Four Season they're amazing we grow Greens in the winter
and then you know this this is planted early June so we've had you know a few harvests here
before now the cubes are going in when the cukes are done in about eight weeks
we'll be moving on to you know a late uh late season crop inside that shelter so it's always
always about maximizing the space but also the time so that you can really grow year round
or as much as possible always you know bumping one crop to another changing it so that you're
maximizing the full potential of your growing area that's what Market gardening is all about
and when you get good at it when you learn these tricks to really grow the plants well
it's amazing how an acre can be an abundance of vegetable it can be a
lot of work for up to four people so again it's like small is beautiful
and it all has to do with taking good care of each plant that's really what the farmer
the farmers kind of different in that way he's farming on big acreage he wants to get
yields but on a volume we want to be careful with everything that we do we want to be taking good
care of each plant making sure that we're planting just enough and that we always have enough
careful balance hey by the way I want to give a shout out to Growers
Growers and Co is amazing company that does tool and apparels and thanks Growers for these knee
pads they're amazing I love my pants and they're a big part of me still being able to Farm after all
these years I'm 45 now and I've been farming for 20 years and my plan my retirement plan
is to keep on doing what I'm doing so I appreciate the care for
pants and apparel that are serviceable to my health
so one of the big problems with growing cucumbers is cucumber Beetle and when the plants are
young the Cucumber Beetle you know everyone knows them they're striped yellow and black
and they can really chew a lot of the young plants so that's not good for the plant but
also the Cucumber beetle can really spread bacterial Wilt which is often
the main reason why you'll have really nice healthy plants that suddenly they start to die
and and then that just spreads like one Beetle can really spread the diseases throughout
so when we're growing inside greenhouses we usually have insect Nets so that the Cucumber
wheel can't get in uh in this tunnel so this is more low-tech this is like what you would
have like on a home Farm we don't have these nets so what I'm doing is simply spraying
with a cowling which is like just like a powder coated and the plant it's a
repulsive so basically the the beetle will be repulsed by this coated powder so it's not
going to attack the plant we've also put some bedding onto the the cukes so this is this is
bedding that we got from a duck farm it's like a mulch which is good for the water retention
but it's also you know fertilized with with duck duck manure on my other Farm projects any crop is
going to be there like 50 days or more we use landscape fabric you've probably seen a lot of
videos where you see landscape fabric but on this Farm since I want the farm to be really
beautiful because you know we have like up to 8 000 visitors coming here this summer you know it's
just landscape fabric if I can use something else that looks better I'll use that and the
garden is small enough so that I can manage the workload of putting mulch over the crops
so I learned how to trace cucumbers like this many moons ago when I was starting in Market gardening
modelan and I had like really net we were lucky enough really lucky we were kind of the first
small microfarm to be part of a program here in Quebec where really seasoned Greenhouse Growers
came to our farm and then with them over two years they showed us a lot of the
a lot of the proper Greenhouse techniques that really professional growers greenhouse Growers
use and those that's where we learn how to graft that's how we learn how to graft tomato plants
we also learn how to you know Trace prune
tomatoes indeterminate tomato plants really growing them to be super like 12 feet long
lower and lean them and cucumbers was definitely one area where we needed to learn because we were
having a lot of problems with the Cucumber beetle with crops that just weren't giving enough fruits
for it long enough and when we learned from from that group of experts our yields went five-fold
and that was really encouraging for us because our strategy at like relinet has always been
to get more yield out of the same acreage because we didn't have more land
so learning Greenhouse techniques was a big part of us becoming much better Growers and getting
more yields and increasing our bottom line about three folds so now Greenhouse produce tomatoes
cucumbers eggplants bell peppers that we also do in a very Greenhouse type way it equates to about
one third of our revenue on the farm and you know we learn how to get three to five times more yield
per square foot with these techniques and since we learned these techniques we practiced them
for many years some of them are kind of talked about in my book The Market Gardener but really
at fqt Farm the other training Farm that's where I really developed the skill and that's
what I teach in the master class and so a lot of Growers have learned from us over the years
and I think that even home gardeners can learn a lot about these small simple techniques it's
all about maximizing yield but there's always a part where there's a skill set that you need
to acquire and that's what learning and teaching is and that's what I'm really excited about now
okay it was truly amazing when we started to learn these Greenhouse techniques what
we realized was that there was somewhat of a barrier between professional Greenhouse
Growers and growing and you know the small scale organic farming world you know most of our friends
we're kind of doing crops in low tunnels field tunnels some had greenhouses but really didn't
know much about these these growing techniques and man it was it just felt like we broke that barrier
we really learn how to do it professionally and then and then the ripple effect here in
Quebec was really big because we went to our traditional you know yearly kind of farm meeting
and farm Gatherings and then we started to show pictures of what we were doing and we shared you
know the the impact of these techniques on our farm with other Growers and soon enough
uh the same kind of uh you know Greenhouse mentors went to other farms and they also
learned and honestly if you come to Quebec now and you visit some Farms
CSA Farms few Acre Farms you know Market Gardens man you'll see that there's a level
of professionalism that I've honestly and frankly haven't seen anywhere else
and I think a big part of that is because we had these older Greenhouse Growers
that were mentoring and and teaching us and so man I've seen it firsthand the consequences and
the impact of that and man I have to say like if you can increase your yields and your bottom
line couple fold learning is a big investment so once this is set up everyone it's really
straightforward the plant is going to climb up the string every week will come and roll
it around eventually it's going to reach the bar and when it reaches the bar we're going
to use this super interesting strategy called the umbrella tracing system and if you want to
learn how to do this you can click on the video here on the screen I hope this was helpful I hope
you guys are doing well I'm doing well I'll see you next time friends Jay I'm out foreign