There are around one million hectares of greenhouses in China. Many of these are so-called ‘’Solar Greenhouses’: greenhouses with a wall that stores solar radiation during the day and releases it into the greenhouse at night.
We recently built a similar style greenhouse at our Bleiswijk site. Together with our consortium partners Delphy, Ridder/Hortimax, Hoogendoorn and Svensson, we kitted it out with a number of Dutch technologies. Of these, substrate cultivation with an irrigation computer, automated ventilation and a transparent screen inside the greenhouse are the most eye-catching innovations. With this Dutch technology and expertise we are aiming to achieve higher production with fewer problems with diseases.
We started off growing cucumbers. On 30 March we planted two varieties: a well-known, robust “Dutch” variety and a new “Chinese” variety with smaller, spiny fruits. The plants are being grown on a semi-high wire system. The crop got off to a promising start straight away due to the flexibility of the screen.
