Although we only have a small cropping area in our greenhouse by industry standards, we endeavour to get the maximum production out of the total greenhouse area by the use of long duration crops, as well as staggering our production.
Our larger compartment is now seeing the end of the 2012/2013 crop and we are preparing to pull out the old crop in week 23 (week commencing 3rd June) and replant in week 25 (week commencing 17th June).
However, the crop still has some good life left in it in terms of production, and we will be continuing to harvest the remaining fruit.
These plants had their growing tips taken out in week 15 to enable us to capitalise on the remaining fruit load.
Our smaller compartment has a newly planted crop in it that was started in week 13 and is now starting to have a fruit load.
As you can see, the plants have a far more vegetative appearance - in fact they are a bit too vegetative! - and we have been working towards making them more generative (fruit bearing) so that the crop becomes more balanced by manipulating our irrigation and climate strategies.
We have already started picking some fruit from the new crop, but in general terms the first two trusses tend not to produce that high a quality fruit, and the quality and volume increases with the 3rd truss onwards.
It seems that our timing is correct and we will be able to keep a continual supply of product to our customers from one crop to the next.
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