Until now, despite the widespread mechanization of the harvesting of various vegetable crops, the ideal cucumber picking machine remains an unattainable dream of collective and farming enterprises. What is the secret?
There is no secret here. It is enough to pay attention to the biological feature of the cucumber, partially similar to tomato. Both vegetables are not maturing at the same time, i.e. of four or five cucumber fruits of marketable maturity, only one can reach, the rest is yet to be. The situation is complicated by the fact that, unlike tomatoes, cucumbers first come to market maturity and only then biological. Thus, on the one hand, picking cucumbers should be done every 2-3 days, and on the other hand, to meet deadlines: 10-15 days after the ovary. Then cucumbers are no longer suitable as fruits and vegetables.
The development of aggregates for mechanical harvesting of cucumbers has long been carried out in many countries, in particular in the USSR, USA and Hungary. However, even in the case when the prototypes were launched into mass production, they did not receive wide distribution and ultimately turned out to be unprofitable in comparison with low-productivity manual labor. Especially in a market economy, where impeccable presentation of vegetables plays a decisive role.
First of all, there can be no question of any safety of plants during mechanical assembly: any cucumber picking machine damages the lashes, picking them up and separating the fruits, which also get "nuts". This is inevitably imposed by the low productivity of such a machine due to the design features. They have a strong effect on the crop in the direction of its decline and wide row spacing, convenient for the unit, but wasting useful area in vain. At the same time, a high culture of agriculture should reign on cucumber plantations, otherwise the machine will fail earlier than expected due to the constant clogging of fruit separators, which are very sensitive to weediness of crops. Of course, no cucumber picking machine is able to selectively harvest marketable fruits, leaving the rest to ripen.
So, reaping the harvest of the "Egyptian vegetable" can not do without manual labor? So far, alas. But you can make it much more productive, and with the help of the same technique.
About five years ago on the Internet, the news about the use of a tractor trailer in Belarus for harvesting cucumbers, more reminiscent of an airplane from the beginning of the 20th century, was accompanied by a flurry of malicious comments. Like, look at what heights Belarusian agricultural engineering has reached!
It seems that the skeptics would have considerably calmed down if they had been given two baskets of cucumbers for comparison: one after picking up by car, and the other by people on an "airplane." In addition, the information that the harvesting of cucumbers in Estonia and Austria is carried out using exactly the same aggregates, for some reason did not cause biliary ridicule.
And the benefits are obvious. At a tractor speed of about 1 km / h, ten workers manage to collect only marketable fruits. In this case, plants are not damaged. Aisles are dense. The fruiting period and labor productivity are increasing.
And if such a “one-handed” cucumber picking machine turns out to be more productive and perfect than all the wonders of technology created before it, why not use it?