this little piggy had lettuce

all the root crops and the salad beds were planted on thursday, a good amount of planting done.

today i got ready for the oakmont winter market that will be on saturday (tomorrow). the weather is suppose to be low 60s with some sun, so it should be a good turn out. in the picture is a pile of baby lettuce. this was growing in the greenhouse, but has been moved just outside the greenhouse and gets put under plastic as necessary. after cutting it, washing it and bagging it there was a little extra that i ate tonight. so good...so small and tender and colorful.

all greens are cut, with scissors mostly, put into a dish pan/tub and washed. washed means double rinsed in two sinks filled with water - one sink is luke warm water, the second sink is cold water. the idea is that the warm water allows the greens to take in water, while the cold water closes them up so they retain that water...both temperatures allowing the greens to look fresh and stay fresh. but once the greens get so wet, we must dry them out a bit, otherwise they would just rot. so we put them into a mesh laundry bag and put them in the washing machine on spin cycle. yes, the washing machine. it acts as a big salad spinner. all the excess water is spun off and the greens come out ready for packing. all greens are weighed (different weights are applied to different greens) and bagged. in a time when so many people are trying to get away from using plastic bags, we use a lot. but we haven't found a better way to keep our greens fresh. especially in the heat of the summer, at market the greens would just wither to nothing. we use several different sizes of bags so the product fits in the bag, with little wasted space.

the baby lettuce in the picture was bagged at an eighth of a pound and all that lettuce in the picture gave me 12 bags of that size - one and a half pounds. and we do charge more for lettuce so small. you need a lot to fill a bag than if it were allowed to grow larger. hey, if whole foods can charge more for baby/micro greens, so can we! :-)