Market Farming

["Brigette Leach" <afhg AT ctsmail.net>]

Wendy,

 

We've been growing salad greens for several years now in both a hydroponic system and in high tunnels. All of it is harvested by plucking the larger leaves from the bottom of the plant and allowing the smaller, central leaves to grow. It is not unusual to leave only one or two of the smaller central leaves if need be, and the plants do just fine. (How close we pick depends on the age of the plant and the orders needing to be filled.) Then again, it will depend on how many plants one has growing and what one needs to produce. We harvest as much as 60 pounds weekly. Red Sails is just one of about 20 or so varieties we grow consistently.

 

We don't currently harvest anything by the head because this works for our customer base. The downside is that it is labor intensive, but so is most of what we do.

 

Brigette

Avalon Farms Homegrown

Share of the Farm

www.avalonfarmshomegrown.net

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Avalon Farms

To: 'Market Farming'

Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 10:18 PM

Subject: [Market-farming] Cropping lettuce leaves

Has anyone cropped leaves off of developing heads of loose leaf lettuce? Red sails to be exact? I needed to supplement the couple mature heads I had so I cropped the lower outside leaves off some younger plants. Just 2 or 3 leaves per plant. Will this stunt their growth? Seems like these leaves would be old and unusable by harvest anyway.

 

Thanks,

Wendy

Avalon Farms

---

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