Cucumber harvest halved due to cold wave and snowfall

Recently, citizens entering farmers' markets have clearly felt that vegetable prices keep rising. A few days ago, the reporter came to the vegetable greenhouse area of Shiziyuan Village, Dongjia Town, Licheng District. Vegetable farmer Wang Yuanhua told the reporter that the drop in temperature leading to reduced vegetable production is the main reason. The reporter followed Wang Yuanhua into the greenhouse where cucumbers are grown. After the afternoon sun, the humidity inside the greenhouse was relatively high. “Cucumbers are most afraid of low temperatures. When they grow well, one can be close to 30 cm long. Look now, they cannot even reach half that length.” Wang Yuanhua said while gesturing. “Take cucumbers for example. Usually we can harvest 100 to 200 jin at a time. On January 20 we harvested once and got only 80 jin, a reduction of more than half.”

During the interview, the reporter saw that Wang Yuanhua's wife, Song Liyan, was leading two people in building “small fire basins” with bricks. “When the nighttime temperature is too low, we light a fire to raise the temperature,” Song Liyan said. “To prevent freezing, we chose 5 spots in each greenhouse and built them up with bricks. When the time comes, we put in corn cobs that are almost burned out. This way the smoke is not too heavy to fumigate the vegetables, and it can also achieve the effect of raising the temperature.”