Zuidgeest Delfgauw switches from Son-T to LED

At the beginning of this year, the growers’ association Oxin invested in LED lighting at grower Zuidgeest Delfgauw. And with results, because the company currently has three times as much light with the same power input.

Zuidgeest Delfgauw specializes in the cultivation of high-wire cucumbers under lights. The family business, which covers 5 hectares, harvests around 16 million cucumbers annually. Previously, the cultivation took place under Son-T lamps, but in early 2024 the switch was made to LED lamps. The nursery was assisted in this by Ledgnd, the brand-independent LED advisor for horticulture. “There were so many options that we didn’t know which lamps to choose,” says Mike Zuidgeest. “We wanted to switch to LED, but one supplier delivers so many percent red, so many percent blue and so many percent green, while another supplier does it completely differently. We need certain spectrums that they don’t need in tomatoes, for example, such as far red. A cucumber plant without far red light will not grow and stretch, which is of no use at all. Where do you start then? We wanted dimmable light, but that comes at an extra cost. In addition, the efficiency must be higher.”

On the advice of Ledgnd, who also helped the nursery with the subsidy application, they opted for lamps with dimmable far-red light, and Zuidgeest is very pleased with this. “The Son-T lamps went to about 75 micromol after five years. When we hung up these LED lamps, we suddenly went to 200 micromol on the PAR meter. That’s almost three times as much light with the same power input! And within three to four days the plants started to grow, and the fruits came off ‘with the speed of light ‘. It hasn’t stopped since, actually.” Now that the first harvest round since the installation of the LED lamps is behind them, Zuidgeest can only be positive. “We haven’t had any growing problems and we’ll be getting more sunlight towards the summer, so it should only get easier.” Moreover, although the speed of the plant remained the same after the switch from Son-t to LED, the nursery was able to set more stems per square meter earlier. “That’s why we want to set out even more plants per square meter even earlier next year and harvest even earlier.”