Growing Marketable Lettuce in Boxes
Winter Lake participates in a farmers market. The farmers market customers demand the freshest produce possible. It was reasoned that the freshest produce is picked immediately before sale to the customers. To find the best ways of getting the freshest produce to the customers, several methods were tried.
The most successful method was to grow the produce in boxes that were taken to the market. The produce was harvested from the boxes in the presence of the customer and the sale was made. This resulted in the freshest produce available. This method was very popular with the customers. They had the experience of seeing the produce harvested and also having the freshest produce possible. This method was simple to implement and had few drawbacks.
One produce item grown was lettuce. When lettuce is harvested for sale, it quickly grows limp if not refrigerated. At farmers markets, it is hard to keep the lettuce fresh. Another problem is that unsold lettuce does not store well and so is usually composted, resulting in a loss of income.
To overcome the drawbacks of lettuce, boxes were tried as a growing method. This proved successful with lettuce.
The lettuce variety grown was a short type of Romaine lettuce. The best soil was a rich, slightly sandy loam. The minimum soil depth was six inches. The largest boxes used for the market were eighteen inches by eighteen inches. Larger boxes proved to be too heavy to conveniently transport.
The lettuce was sown in a grid with a spacing of three inches. When the lettuce was three inches high, it was thinned to six inches. This allowed for seed germination failure. The lettuce box was completely filled when harvesting started. Harvesting was done when the lettuce was nine inches high.
One problem with growing lettuce in boxes and pots was that the watering is critical. Lettuce can be grown slightly dry. If too much water is used, the heads tend to rot off at ground level.
The overall quality of the lettuce was high. There was no waste due to unsold lettuce. The customers liked having the lettuce harvested in front of them and all the lettuce sold. Instead of pulling the lettuce up by the roots, the head was cut off two inches above the soil line. This allowed the cut lettuce to produce a second crop of lettuce. Each lettuce root produced three to five miniature heads of lettuce for sale. The miniature heads were marketed as second cut lettuce. All the secondary crop of lettuce was sold with no waste. The overall quality of the secondary lettuce was high.
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