Great looking produce, Jay! I like the weights around your canopy legs. I've seen quite a few different things used to hold canopies down, and some don't work as well as others. We had a number of windy and rainy markets this fall and I was wishing for something other than 5 gallon buckets of water. Do yours work well?

ThinMan

Jay,

Wow! Everything looks great. Buy Fresh, Buy Local. :-)

Eric
Double Dog Farm
{{gwi:1037531}}

Thinman: I do like the weights, one thing I would change is to use bigger buckets. If I have time, I will make some out of 3 gallon buckets. I would also drill another hole in the tent so I can use a wing nut instead of a plain nut. The current hole is too close for a wing nut.

Jay

nice stuff jay. can you talk about how you clean your salad mix? do you use a salad spinner? and spinach?
at our market there are vendors who sell salad mix for $10/lb.

Randy:

The salad mix is really clean and bug free in the fall. I bag it up in 8 ounce bags and try to get $3.00 a bag. $10 a pound, THAT IS CRAZY! On Wednesday, I had people come up and ask, "Will you take less for your Lettuce?" I almost laughed! If they only know the labor involved! I don't know why I grow lettuce and spinach, I can barely sell it and lowering the price doesn't move it any faster.

How do I prep greens for sale. This is what I do. I have several big 18 gallon rubbermade totes with lids. I harvest the greens into large bowls, then I dump them into the tubs. Using a hose, I squirt down the greens and fill the tub with enough water to cover the greens and put the lid on and keep it in the shade. I go back and pick another large bowl and dump the on top of the greens in the water. I rinse and add more water. I do this until I have all the greens I need. Each time I add some more water to the tub and push the greens down in the water. This is my first rinse.

After harvest I take the tubs into the house and pull them out of the water and put them in the big sinks in the house. I do another rinsing and then put them in big mesh bags. To dry, I place them in an old washing machine and turn it on spin cycle. I make sure I put a clean towel on the other side to make sure it stays balanced. I spin them until they are dry. Usually 30 sec to 1 min. Sometimes you have to stop and fluff/rearrange them to ensure good drying.

I usually spin out 2-3 pounds at a time. I am sure you could do more, but I don't harvest and sell that much at a time.

I remove the bag, dump out on a clean table and sort, mix, bag and weigh then I put it in the fridge. My lettuce will easily last 10-14 days and even longer. I tell my customers it is rinsed and they need to do another rinse and dry prior to eating. However, we just eat it out of the bag at our house!

I do the same with the spinach, however, I do it in smaller batches if the leaves are bigger.

If I had more help at the market, I would probably just bag up the lettuce in big bags and then dump it out in a large tub and have the customers bag up their own. However, this seems very dirty to me. I don't know what my customers would think.

Jay

i think i will look for a big salad spinner since i don't have an old washing machine. the vendor who sells the mix for $10/lb displays it in a big bowl with tongs and customers take what they want and put it into a plastic bag. i prefer the pre-bagged way at least for now. i am new to growing salad mix.

I really like the big bowl w/tongs idea. I know they have it priced at $10/lb, but does it really sell at that price? It would never go for that where I am!

it sells well at that price. but i don't know how much they sell so it really doesn't tell the story.

$10 a pound sounds high--until you show someone just how much you get in a pound. That's a lot of leaf lettuce. Maybe you could have a sample bowl showing how much is in that pound.