I harvest greens & salad mix 2 days before market. I have both refrigeration and hydro-cooling. I've gone so far as to sell week-old unsold lettuce mix to a caterer because the lettuce mix didn't look a day over harvest and it was still gorgeous and tasty. If the greens are still uber fresh--they represent you well--I say sell 'em when you can.

I've noticed when we spin the greens dry there is less fogging than when we don't. Rather obvious I guess, less water in bag means less to fog. As mentioned above, though, a lot would depend on other environmental factors. Good luck!

I work for a woman who sells greens, and we sell at two markets, one on Friday and one on Saturday. We usually harvest on Friday for both.

I do believe she may sell some of those Friday-harvested greens at a Wednesday market also, but not completely sure of this. Also, she usually sells whole heads, and just started with the bag of mixes near the end of last season, so I don't think she has sold those left-over mixes at the Wednesday market yet (because she never has any left over, lol!)

We will be doing more experimenting this season. I guess this all is really not much help, lol, but thought I'd throw it out there.

Good luck!
:)
Dee

Thanks for the comments. I did go ahead and sell some salad greens today (Tuesday) because they seemed to be in excellent condition and the bag sizes were fairly small (about 5 oz.) so I would expect that the customer would consume this amount rather quickly.

One grower at our market brings hydroponically grown romaine lettuce heads to market in water with the roots attached. They even sell them that way and advise the customer that the lettuce head can be placed in a vase with the roots in water and that it will last longer that way as they pick leaves off of the head. I wouldn't be surprised if this grower takes any leftovers back to the green house and simply pops them right back into the hydroponic trough.

Perhaps a similar approach could be used to keep romaine heads fresh even if they are soil grown. Maybe you could pull them up by the roots rather than cutting the heads and then immediately place them into water and take them to market that way. Then you could bring the excess home and refrigerate them with their roots still in water. Seems like this would really keep them in prime condition for a second market several days later.

Well I discussed my idea mentioned above with the hydroponic grower at my market and he said he hadn't tried return romaine heads with roots to the hydro system but that it would probably work. His main concern was with the labor that would be involved. I have a far smaller operation (non-hydroponic) so the concept may still be useful at my limited scale.

Basically my idea is that I would soak my soil well with water and then gently pull the romaine heads out of the ground roots and all. Then I would rinse the roots and heads of each plant and place them into a portable tank that I could take to market (i.e. Rubbermaid tote.) This way I could just sell the heads as needed and then take the remainders home at the end of the day to refrigerate and keep in prime condition until the Tuesday market. Hmmmmm...the more I think about it though the more it does sound like too much work for a few heads of romaine. :(

Steve, I believe one season we pulled lettuce up by the roots in stead of cutting it. At least for a few markets. The woman I work for is always changing her methods, lol, and trying different things. Anyway, she had heard something along the same lines, that lettuce would keep longer if roots were still attached.

We never had any lettuce to speak of left to bring back, and she would just keep whatever few she had leftover in their bags and in a cooler. After all, we would be selling it the next day, and not trying to save it for 4 or 5 days.

I think we stopped harvesting this way because it was just too much work to clean the lettuce, if I remember correctly. And I may not be remembering correctly, lol.

Gee, once again I realize that I haven't really helped much, but just sharing my experience, such as it is.

:)
Dee