15
Feb
We are so glad you asked.
The average, ole, run-of-the-mill cucumber grows on a vine that creeps along the ground, growing wherever it wants. Here at Southern Valley, we grow the new and improved cucumber…and we do that by growing it up a stake with trellis netting. It looks a little something like this:
Like all of our produce, our cucumbers are started from seed in our greenhouses and then transplanted by hand into the soil. Once the cucumbers have reached an appropriate height, the vines are then taught to climb up and through the net. This involves intensive training where we literally have to guide each vine by hand in the direction we want it to go. Once trained, they’ll continue to grow as long as they have something to wrap themselves around. For us, that means they grow to about 6 feet tall (as tall as our poles) and sometimes spill over to the other side of the netting.
One of Southern Valley’s Pole-Grown Cucumber fields in Tennessee.
So, why do we bother growing the “Pole-Grown Cucumber”?
Again, so glad you asked.
We do so because of the superior quality of cucumber it produces. For starters, because it is not lying in the dirt, the product is cleaner from the get-go. Also, because it is up off the ground, the belly doesn’t turn yellow and you get a solid, all-over-green cucumber. At the end of the day, this growing method leaves us with a cleaner, straighter, more uniformly colored cucumber. This is how we are told you like to purchase them in your local grocery store, therefore this is how we like to grow them for you.
We started growing cucumbers some 25+ years ago and over time have transitioned all of our cucumbers to Pole-Grown status. We think it is a superior product and hope you do too.