Lettuce Days 2016 - part 1

When we came through Yuma last year on our way to the Tucson Escapade, we were happy to be in town for Lettuce Days. In fact, our experience last year has driven many of our decisions for where we've ended up this year!

Lettuce Days 2016 is this weekend - Saturday and Sunday. We bought our tickets for the event, as well as for a walking tour of the Ag Education area and The Recipe Box, at the Yuma Visitors Center after our Field to Feast tour on Wednesday. We were glad that we had gotten the walking tour and Recipe Box tickets ahead of time as they were sold out at the event.

Last year was an overcast, sprinkly, cool day. Today was bright sunshine and highs in the mid-to-high 80s. It was a bit hot today, but a beautiful day.

Some pictures from the event:

The grounds where Lettuce Days is held are part of the crop fields of the University of Arizona Yuma Agricultural Center. This was planted with annual rye for the event.

Our guide for the walking tour of the Yuma Agricultural Center was Dr. Kurt Nolte.

Their "equipment shed". Kurt said that they probably have more different kinds of equipment than any farm or grower, as they normally are dealing with very small plots and therefore just need small equipment, but at times they are trying to emulate/replicate a big grower's environment, and therefore have the big equipment too.

 Kurt said that the land where we were had heavy clay soil (this was where we had harvested the vegetables for the Field-to-Feast tour, and the root crops were definitely "stuck" in clay!). I think he said that the clay was 60' deep! On the mesa there is more sandy soil, better for deep rooted crops such as citrus, dates, and alfalfa. Our "landlord" at Cactus Blossom had told us that the sand here is 300' deep!

This is a preserved safe environment to keep citrus trees protected from the Asian Citrus Psyllid. These insects carry a disease in their saliva that causes citrus greening. Although the insect exists here in Yuma County, the ones here are not yet carrying the disease, but, it is causing havoc in Florida, Texas, and Mexico, and in some areas of California, so they figure it is just a matter of time before it hits here. Kurt called this "Noah's Ark". They are growing stock so when/if the citrus trees here are hit by the citrus greening, and trees will need to be taken out, they will have stock that will have been protected from the insect. He also said, though, that it could be that the climate conditions here are enough different that it won't come here. 

 The research department here is *not* doing research on plant breeding, though there are growers and other folks in the valley here who are doing research in that area. He said that there are about 80 students in the program here studying agronomy. They support bachelors and masters degree programs here in Yuma.

This was a "sick" plant in one of the research labs. This lab gets sick plants from growers who are looking for a way to keep their whole field from succumbing to whatever is causing a problem. They bring the plant here to the "doctor" and hopefully get a treatment that they can employ to rescue their crop.

These refrigerator-looking devices are actually small-zone agriculture growing units. Many of the diseases/problems that the researchers are attempting to find solutions for may be hard to find naturally occurring in the field. For example, even though this is a "La Nina" year which should have meant more rain in this area of the country, they haven't had rain since the first week of January. They want to have solutions available so if they have a damp year, they know how to address the problems that might occur in the produce being grown.

This happened to be the desk area of one of the research labs - this lab deals primarily with weeds. Not only does he research ways to combat weeds, he is also responsible for keeping seeds of weeds available so they can be grown for experimentation of potential herbicides.

Dwayne in the food safety lab. This is a relatively new area of research - ensuring the safety of our vegetables.

More to come in part 2 ... read it here:  http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2016/02/lettuce-days-2016-part-2.html