Extra Wide Beds
Sep 7, 2006 4:25 PM
More growers in Imperial Valley are planting their leafy vegetables to extra wide beds, allowing them to mow harvest and get multiple picks on fresh processed crops and perhaps even squeeze in an extra spring crop of melons, peppers or tomatoes. Wide beds have been growing in the Salinas and Coastal vegetable producing areas of California in recent seasons.
”There are now a lot of leaf lettuce, spinach and leafy vegetables grown on wide beds,” Natwick said. “We have definitely seen the trend continue to more baby vegetables and salad mixes, and growers are planting several seed lines on an 80-inch bed instead of the traditional single-seed line on a 40-inch bed. It’s very likely we’ll see more of that acreage, although how much more I don’t know.”
