Early Lettuce in Quebec

Photo: Early leaf lettuce is harvested at Margeric farm in Laval. Photo by Gordon Beck.

Looking like rivers of gently rippling waters, rows of early leaf lettuce are a dramatic sight, particularly when the two colours – green and red – alternate in a field. From late May to mid-June, Quebec supermarkets and fruit and vegetable stores sell this first lettuce of the season, much of it from one giant farm in Laval north of Montreal. The 1,200-hectare (3,000-acre) Margiric farm, believed by the Gibouleau family owners to be the largest family farm in Canada, uses greenhouses and then, after transplanting seedlings to the fields, covers the lettuce with protective plastic netting. “It’s like a little greenhouse inside,” said Mario Cloutier, the farm’s sales and marketing director, about his rows of baby lettuce, moist and warm under the plastic. Red leaf lettuce, once rare, now commands one third of the leaf lettuce market.