Kronan said cucumbers have sold out in stores across Iceland. The sales picked up so quickly that the store did not have time to prepare, said Gudrun Adalsteinsdottir, the company’s chief executive. “We are, just literally, eating it up,” joked Gudny Ljosba Hreinsdottir, 29, who runs Wake Up Reykjavik, an Icelandic tourism company with a walking food tour…
Huh?
Iceland produces most of their cucumbers in high tech greenhouses using geothermal energy for heat and light.
Greenhouse cucumbers grow best in temps around 25-35c. Since the ambient temp in Iceland is usually cooler than this, venting the greenhouse is uncommon.
As the plants use CO2 in photosynthesis the levels of CO2 in the air decline and the O2 levels increase. The lower levels of CO2 drastically slow down the cucumbers growth. The growers often supplement the plants with CO2 from tanks.