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<br />LETTUCE <br /> <br />Lettuce started here with a planting of 8 acres in 1956, Thi~ grew <br />to 3,600 acres in 1965 and 8,700 in 1973, with many decreases in between <br />and since, This is a specialty crop that requires expert management <br />and specialized equipment. It is highly speculative, One lettuce grower <br />is quoted as saying that "to be in this business, a man must be 75% <br />nuts and have a banker who is 25% nuts," <br /> <br />The type grown here is mostly the Iceberg variety of head lettuce, <br />It must be planted in rigid schedule with the harvest date in mind, <br />Planting and thinning require much labor, The ground must be irrigated <br />before planting and very carefully during the growing season, It must <br />be picked at the right time. <br /> <br />Lettuce is hand picked, field packed in cartons, trucked to vacuum <br />coolers, and loaded into refrigerator cars or onto trucks for shipment <br />to market. This requires large crews of workers. <br /> <br />It is grown only in the valley of this District on ground not too <br />sandy, The usual pattern in the easterly three-quarters of the District <br />is to harvest from November 15 to December 25 and from March 1 <br />to April 15, In January and February and after April, the crews must <br />be employed in some other locality, Hence operators work wherever <br />the weather permits. They stretch from here to Salinas, California, <br /> <br />In the Dome area of the District, roughly the westerly one-quarter, <br />winter weather is warmer and lettuce may be harvested from November <br />15 to April 15, In this area, there are operators who own their own <br />land or landowners who have become lettuce operators, whichever came <br />fIrst, <br /> <br />At this particular season of 1977-78, there are eight to ten operators <br />in Wellton-Mohawk and they are using the five vacuum coolers that <br />are here plus some in Yuma, Most operators pay cash rent for land; <br />some work on joint venture with the landowner, <br /> <br />A good yield in the fall is 600 cartons of 24 heads per carton per <br />acre, In the spring it will yield about 700 cartons per acre, But if the <br />price isn't right at the point of delivery, it doesn't make any difference <br />what the yield is, <br /> <br />MELONS <br /> <br />Cantaloupes and watermelons do very well here, but like lettuce, <br />it is a boom or bust business, especially with cantaloupes. Cantaloupes <br />require expert management and specialized equipment, They are hand <br />picked, hauled to sheds where they are hand packed into wooden crates <br />and loaded into refrigerator cars or onto trucks, <br /> <br />Cantaloupes started here in 1954 with 25 acres and have varied <br />up and down from zero in some years to 3,900 acres in 1969 to 930 <br />acres in 1976 and 1,060 in 1977, Yields are excellent. <br /> <br />26 <br />