Lettuce That’s Head and Shoulders Above The Rest: Real Dirt
Lettuce That’s Head and Shoulders Above The Rest: Real Dirt
Quality soil is the secret to Greenbelt’s irresistible, award-winning lettuces.
Ian Adamson, president of Greenbelt Microgreens, and head grower Alice Farris show off their totally organic lettuces that have won an Agri-food Award of Excellence from the Ontario government. (SONIA DAY)
By SONIA DAY | Fri., June 23, 2017
Let us talk about lettuce.
The truth is, I’ve wimped out. I no longer grow any. The likes of Lactuca sativa got banished from my garden, because infuriating intruders kept beating me to the punch.
Caterpillars, earwigs, rabbits, groundhogs, birds, deer . . . They all dropped by. Plus, of course, slugs, scores of those slithery, slimy horrors that sneak in after dark. And chomp, chomp. The next morning, fantasies of fresh salad fixings vanished — faster than ice cream in a heat wave.
There was also the bothersome business of bolting. Just about every lettuce variety I tried went whoosh, like a rocket into space, if the temperature soared suddenly in spring (which unfortunately happens a lot, in our yo-yo climate.)
And although we home gardeners love to kid ourselves that our misshapen, nibbled, less-than-perfect produce is still fine to eat, (because hey, didn’t we grow it organically, from non-GMO seeds?) some just isn’t. Elongated stalks and past-their-prime leaves of a bolted lettuce head taste so bitter, I once spat them out at the dining table.
Yet I love lettuce. And like everyone, I worry about questionable residues left behind on specimens sold at the supermarket. So good news: there’s a new Canadian outfit that produces such tasty, fresh, totally organic lettuce, I have no qualms about not growing my own anymore.
Greenbelt Microgreens came on the scene about a year ago, started by a former landscaper named Ian Adamson. And he’s sure done his homework. Eco-conscious himself, he decided to figure out exactly what modern consumers would like to see in salad greens — and the results certainly push all the right buttons.
Greenbelt’s lettuces (plus pea greens and a variety of microgreens) are grown locally in greenhouses, like so much of what we eat today. Yet they’re not hydroponically raised, with chemical nutrients added to the water around the roots. Instead, these lettuces develop in their own individual small pots filled with soil — just like out in the garden. Does that make flavour better? I think so.