March greens - Yuma to Salinas Valley

No, it is not your imagination that the green leafy vegetables you have been getting are looking, tired, dried out and not very green. The vegetables look as tired as I feel when it snows on the 7th day of Spring!

Most of our vegetables and greens have been coming from one of the sunniest places on earth. Yuma, Arizona is the lettuce capital of the world. Most of the leafy green vegetables, greens and many fruits come from this part of the world between November and March - it’s also about this time that our produce begins to look tired.

Yuma county has 230,000 acres of land utilized for agriculture with 100% irrigation from the Colorado River.

Two million pounds of lettuce per day are harvested and sent across the country! Crops harvested in Yuma on Monday reach us in the East Coast on Wednesday. That bag of Earthbound Romaine and Andy Boy Broccoli Rabe came from Yuma these past four months. But it is not just lettuce and broccoli. More than 175 different crops are grown in the Yuma area, including:

• lemons
• tangelos
• tangerines
• watermelon
• cantaloupe
• organic pears
• apples
• durum wheat (mostly shipped to Italy)

Yuma farmers also grow kosher wheat used by Orthodox Jews to bake matzah, the unleavened bread wafers that are eaten at Passover. The rules for kosher production include that the wheat not receive moisture immediately prior to harvest. The desert conditions and controlled irrigation make it a perfect spot to grow kosher wheat. Dates are another local crop with about 10 million pounds of dates harvested each year, being the largest producer of the best Medjool dates. They are an organic product, as no pesticides or chemicals are used on the trees or the dates.

It is about this time, each year, when the farmers begin to move 600 miles north to begin planting crops in the Salinas Valley region, marking the beginning of the Spring planting season. If you notice supplies dwindling and looking rather tired, you can know that within a few weeks, we will indeed be seeing some very vibrant greens (unless you know Simon Athearn who is growing two hoop houses full of greens). I happened to catch a glimpse of his tomato plants last week. He had a fan blowing on them as he claims the windy conditions make the stalk stronger and more resilient to the real conditions of the world.

Collecting eggs in March and thinking about greener days!    >