- The United States keeps running out of lettuce,
and the lettuce that we do have can sometimes cost
up to $12 a head.
So in today's video, I'm gonna talk about
why this keeps happening to us,
and what you can do about it in your own home garden.
Imagine rolling up to your favorite Chipotle
like I often do, and asking for a burrito,
or a burrito bowl, and they ask you for the toppings
that you want, and instead of the guac being extra,
it's actually the lettuce that is extra.
Believe it or not that's something that's actually happening
in small pockets around the country right now,
because of this so-called lettuce shortage.
So to understand how this could possibly happen
with the most valuable vegetable crop grown in America,
which is lettuce, we first have to understand
how it is produced on an industrial scale.
There are three primary locations, and two primary states
where lettuce is cultivated in America,
California and Arizona.
And the first location would be
the Central Coast of California, in the summer.
This would be the area of California
that has the most mild temperatures,
as lettuce wants to grow below 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
So I'm here in my artichoke patch, because in my garden
this is the area where the climate is most akin
to that Central Coast of California in the summer,
with a shady, shady zone, that keeps temperatures down
in the heat of that season.
In fall and spring, we now move to the San Juaquin Valley,
still in California and known as the salad bowl
of the entire country.
So in my yard, this is my little salad bowl
in fall and winter.
The temperatures in the front yard raised bed garden
are nice and mild, and I can cultivate a huge amount
of lettuce just right here.
In the winter, we are now in Arizona,
where 30% of all US lettuce production takes place.
So Imperial Valley and Yuma Valley are the two areas
in the low desert of Arizona where this takes place.
In my backyard, that would be this area
where I get a lot of sun in the winter.
Make sure that the temps actually stay warm enough
for that lettuce to produce.
So basically there's this dance with three locations
in two states that keeps sort of shifting
throughout the seasons, and that's how lettuce gets produced
for most of the entire country.
So you can see how there might become a problem
when it comes to both temperature regulation
and potential disease.
Here is where the problem starts to show its ugly face.
You have two things you're battling.
Number one, you're chasing climates where temperatures
are suitable to grow lettuce in.
You're never chasing those 100%.
If you're in the San Juaquin Valley,
or maybe the central coast,
and temperatures spike for some period of time,
you can get a huge amount of crop death that way.
But you're also battling thrips,
which are spreading two different types of diseases,
to lettuce and can kill them at a rate of 70 to 80%.
Those two diseases are Impatiens Necrotic Spot Virus,
and Pythium Wilt, and plants that have one
often have the other.
So the death rate is extremely high.
So if you combine those things,
with the fact that demand for lettuce across the country
sort of remains semi stable throughout the year,
it's not a perfect flat line.
But you know, we want our lettuce,
we want our salads all the time.
That's a big task for industrial production to keep up with.
So you can see how, one thing goes wrong,
you get a massive swath of death,
and then you get lettuce case prices going
from about $40 a case up to over $150,
and those cases are less full of lettuce at that price.
We know three things about lettuce, my friends.
Number one it's the most commercially important crop
grown in America.
Number two, we lose a lot of it to disease
or temperature issues, crop loss.
And number three, it's one of the easiest things to grow
in the garden.
If you learn how to start the seeds,
which we have a full video on,
you really don't need to know much more.
You wanna put it in some nice, rich, well draining soil.
Don't let those temps get above about 80
or so degrees Fahrenheit.
It can even tolerate that for a little bit
as long as you put some kind of shade over it.
And the most important thing, is that you don't have to grow
some of the more basic varieties that are grown commercially
like Romaine or Iceberg.
That's almost all of the commercial production, in fact.
You can get into some really unique bespoke varieties
which I'll share with you right now.
I've got eight varieties of lettuce for you
that are a little more exciting than your Iceberg
and Romaine, all from Botanical Interests.
So first of all, we've got Brentwood leaf lettuce,
really beautiful sort of reddish leaves.
They're higher off the core
so it's easy to cut them off for salad.
Very productive in small spaces,
and they are slower to bolt.
If you like Romaine, but wanna spice it up a little bit,
go with Truchas mini Romaine.
It's obviously a little bit smaller, deep red,
easy to clean, nice and compact.
So again, if you just have one raised bed,
you can plant a ton of this stuff.
Next up, Buttercrunch butter head,
a delicious sort of creamy texture as the name would imply.
It is extremely easy to grow,
and also is what's called an All America Selections winner.
Which means that the National Garden Bureau
has selected it to be an exceptional variety.
Ezrilla leaf lettuce is my next pick here.
It has beautiful sort of frilly leaves.
They are short heads and they grow relatively compact
and uniform, meaning that if you're making a big old salad,
you can come by with a harvest knife, cut them all off,
and you don't have to do any sort of prep,
because all the leaves are the same size.
Rouge d'Hiver, my French is poor, but this variety is not.
It is a gorgeous, gorgeous variety.
It's been around since the 1800's, and it's incredibly
cold tolerant for you lower zone growers.
Little Gem lettuce is probably the one you recognize
if you've been out to a bougie restaurant any time
in the last couple years, because it is their favorite one.
A gem salad kind of always shows up on these menus,
and instead of paying them $42.99 and tax, and tip,
you can pay a few dollars, and get a packet of gem lettuce
and grow it out, and it's incredibly productive
and very delicious.
Red Sails leaf lettuce is a really nice open
loose leaf lettuce that you can grow in the summer.
It's a little bit more heat tolerant.
Oftentimes in the summer, lettuce will get bitter
as it's exposed to more sun and more heat.
Red Sails of course will,
but it's a little bit more tolerant to those temperatures.
Then we have Marvel of Four Seasons butter head,
which is a head lettuce that starts out green
and kind of goes to this sort of cranberry red at the edges.
Hands down, one of the more gorgeous lettuce varieties
you'll find.
You can find all those awesome varieties
in the video description, my friends,
but seriously just grow some lettuce.
It is that easy to make a nice fresh winter salad right now.
So that's what I'm gonna do.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
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