A Matter of Size

Does size matter? Find out in this weeks newsletter. But first these announcements.

We will take clean, pint-size plastic clamshells. Pint-size only please! We use them for cherry tomatoes. Leave them in the pick-up tent or your delivery tote.

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Farm News

So I finally had a question asked of me that I feel makes sense to share. So here it is:

“When I shop at a grocery store the organic produce seems to always be smaller. For example, the conventionally grown apples are always bigger than the organic apples. Why is that?”

At the time of the question I didn’t have a great all encompassing answer and after a weekend of weeding and reflection I think I know why. There isn’t one. There isn’t one reason why organic produce is smaller and in fact the premise of the question may not be correct. But it did make me think more about the whole size issue. So lets dive right in.

This first thing to look at when it comes to size is what dictates the size of produce? The answer is quite varied. Lets look at a few examples. The size of tomatoes is mostly determined by the tomato genetics. Some tomatoes naturally grow large. Some tomatoes naturally grow small. No matter how you grow a cherry tomato it will never reach a pound in weight. It just doesn’t have the right genes to do it.

Now lets take a look at lettuce. Much like tomatoes lettuce genes dictate its growth and will have an impact on its final size. But unlike tomatoes, the environment in which it is grown may have a more substantial effect. Lettuce plants are “programmed” to grow for a certain length of total daylight time then it transitions into its reproductive phase. Here is a description from Iowa State University:

Lettuce has an internal counter that keeps track of the number of daylight hours the plant receives. Once a critical number of hours are received, the plant sends up its flower stalk. The exact number of hours varies from cultivar to cultivar.

Iowa State Univerity

Who knew lettuce was so punctual?

Sweet corn is an example of where environment plays an important role. Sweet corn grown in an ideal environment will reach its full potential. Anything less than ideal will cause the plant to fall short so to speak.

Now lets take a look at broccoli. The heads of broccoli you purchase are the immature flowers heads of the broccoli plant. If the unsuspecting farmer let the broccoli continue to grow these heads will eventually turn into a bouquet of small yellow flowers. Thoroughly unappetizing. So why are some broccoli heads bigger and some smaller?

I picked these examples because they show how different factors influence the size of the final product. And by using them to illustrate these differences, perhaps we can figure out why there is this perceived (or perhaps real) size difference between conventional and organic produce.

Let’s start with lettuce. Since lettuce has a finite time before it bolts, to grow big lettuce you have to grow it fast before it reaches its bolting stage. Like all plants, lettuce needs water and nutrients to grow. So if we give lettuce a lot of both quickly it should grow quickly. And for the most part it does. But too much water can cause it to get bottom rot and destroy the plant. Too much nitrogen can “burn” the plant. So even conventional growers have to be a bit careful with watering and fertilizing. However the one thing they have that us organic growers do not is a source of cheap, easily accessible nitrogen. Chemical fertilizers are readily released into the soil and accessible to plants. So feeding lettuce chemical fertilizers gives lettuce immediate access to nutrients that allow it to grow. Organic growers rely on organic fertilizers that take time to decompose and release nutrients into the soil. With the slower access to nutrients the plants don’t grow as fast and the lettuce doesn’t grow as large prior to its biological clock going off. Of course this isn’t a hard and fast rule and there are other factors involved but with all else being equal, chemically raised lettuce has a better chance of getting large before bolting.

This is true of corn — and maybe more so. Corn is a heavy feeder of nitrogen. Synthetic nitrogen sources are cheap in comparison to organic nitrogen sources thanks to the Haber process. The Haber process combines the hydrogen from natural gas with atmospheric nitrogen to create ammonia. Ammonia readily releases its nitrogen in soil allowing plants to grow quickly. So when you eat those $8 ears of large corn at the state fair this year you have German chemist Fritz Haber to thank!

Now let’s take a look at tomatoes. The types of tomatoes you find in the supermarket have nothing to do with how they are grown and everything to do with how they are shipped. Tomatoes are fragile. Ripe tomatoes squish easily. So most tomatoes are picked under ripe and ripened at the store. Over the years they have bred certain varieties of tomatoes that work best for this shipping situation. Most tomatoes you find in your neighborhood supermarket are grown by large scale growers that grow these types of tomatoes they know will survive the transport to the distribution centers and then to the store. Of course if you shop at smaller co-ops you could purchase local tomatoes that are not the standard, flavorless variety so your mileage may vary.

But if you look at conventionally grown tomatoes and organically grown tomatoes you would not see a huge difference in size — as long as they are the same variety of tomato. The genetics of the tomato plant have a huge influence on the final size of the tomato fruit. However one trick a farmer or gardener could do to increase the size of the fruit is to decrease the number of fruits on the plant. So if you want to grow the biggest tomatoes you need to remove a good portion of the flowers so that there are fewer fruits for the plant to support. (This is especially true of apples.) No difference in organic vs conventional when it comes to removing flowers though conventional farmers may have a chemical that causes flowers to drop so the removal process is less labor intensive.

Finally lets look at broccoli. For those who have been with us over the many years you have seen broccoli of all sizes come out of our farm. Growing broccoli is hard. It is very dependent on growing conditions. It likes it cool — something we have less and less of here in the Midwest. Sometimes we have small heads of broccoli that we bunch together. Other times we have huge heads of broccoli — far larger than you’d find in supermarkets. The size of the broccoli is determined by genetics and growing conditions. With great genetics and ideal growing conditions you can have large broccoli heads.

But why does it seem conventionally grown broccoli is always two heads with approximately the same size head? It seems incredibly uniform. The answer is the market dictates the size of the head. I don’t know the reason but the broccoli market says the heads should be 4-6 inches across — no bigger, no smaller. So when the heads are the right size the broccoli is harvested, bunched, cooled and sold. Large broccoli farms have this down to a science. Since the market determines the broccoli head size in theory there should be little difference in size between organic and conventional. However there is still the issue of nutrient availability where the chemical farms have an advantage. But there are disadvantages to their approach as well that we can get into in another newsletter.

So there really isn’t one answer to the question “Why is organic produce smaller than conventional produce?” And it isn’t always true that organic is smaller. But in my opinion, organic always tastes better and is better for the planet. So if for no other reason I’d choose a bag of delicious, small, organic apples over a bunch of perfectly uniform, shiny, conventionally grown apples.

What will we have this week?

More zucchinis/squash, more cucumbers, onions (and not just the green type), some tomatoes, some cherry tomatoes, fennel, kohlrabi, basil, lettuce, some bok choy (probably the last of it), some broccoli, some beets, snow peas, maybe sweet corn by Thursday (but maybe not), eggplant and some other odds and ends.

FlowerShare this week. No other shares.

Here are the recipes/ideas of the week!

First I used a couple of zucchinis in a chili recipe. It was delicious! I highly recommend putting zucchini in your favorite chili recipe.

Here is a quick recipe for fennel and kohlrabi salad. I’m not sure where it came from but it in on our web site so it must be good.

At the end of this newsletter there is a recipe for Pasta Primavera. You can use just about any of the veggies we give out this week (maybe not the lettuce). Some day I’ll format into our recipe archive.

Though we don’t have bell peppers yet I thought this Kung Pao Chicken recipe would be a great use for some of the zucchinis. We also don’t have a lot of hot peppers but you can always use cayenne powder or some other heat source. Plus it is in our new-fangled recipe format!

That is all for now. Feel free to send in questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, etc.

Joke of the Week

There are no fennel jokes anywhere on the whole internet! You’d think someone would come up with something like fennel being a pain in the anise or something!