We fill 900 boxes a week for our customers. That is a lot of produce and a favorite item in the winter is lettuce. We specialize in baby lettuce that we cut and bag in the field. Once you get it home you can pull from the bag and wash as needed. It keeps better and lasts longer this way.
To produce lettuce beds like this without and hand weeding takes a great deal of skill and some specialized equipment. Firstly we have to start out with beds that are very uniform and as flat as a billiard table (read Pool table). A very flat bed allows our special seed planter to accurately sow 12 rows on the bed with all the seeds at the correct depth. Once the crop is irrigated and germinated we watch to see that we can get into the field with our brush weeder as soon as possible. This machine has tunnels which cover the rows of seedlings and brushes which take out the germinating weeds between the rows. Roberto and Ricardo then come back again at least once per week with this tool until the lettuce is too big to weed.
If we want large heads of lettuce then we thin the crop as we harvest the baby heads leaving a lettuce every 12 inches.
We can sow up to 6 varieties on each bed at one time.
