Romaine hearts are the inner portions of romaine lettuce. There is a strategic harvesting process to produce just the romaine hearts, and that is what I am excited to share with you today! Below, you will see footage of GreenGate Fresh’s romaine heart harvesting operation, straight from Salinas, California.
(You can also click here if you are looking to learn more about how to select and store romaine lettuce!)
Table of Contents
What is the Difference Between Romaine Lettuce and Romaine Hearts?
Full heads of romaine are harvested when being sold as romaine lettuce (as we saw with the harvesting of baby romaine lettuce). Heads of romaine lettuce consist of darker green leaves on the outer portion and lighter green leaves on the interior. During the romaine heart harvest, the romaine lettuce goes through a processing step to become romaine hearts, where the harvesters remove the outer leaves. This results in just the romaine heart portion, with the lighter, crisper leaves in the middle of the romaine lettuce. Romaine hearts can be found in packaged salads, packaged as whole romaine hearts in sealed bags, Caesar salads, and in specialty dishes.
Romaine Heart Harvest
The workers harvest the romaine heads. They work alongside the harvesting rig and the other workers and need to make sure they are keeping pace. After the initial harvest cut, they remove the darker green outer leaves to expose the lighter leaves and also remove a portion of the leaves at the top. (These specific romaine hearts are going to further processing and, for that reason, are being cut in this way to help create their desired product. However, another way to harvest romaine hearts is to leave the upper portion of the leaves and to package them in the field.)
The romaine hearts are placed into bins. Once those bins fill up, the product is rinsed with sanitized water and then the bins are lifted up onto the blue conveyor belt. There is a designated worker that takes the bins from the conveyor line. They dump them into larger bins on the adjacent trailer and return them for the harvesters to continue to use.
Once the bags inside the larger bins are filled, the bags are tied up to cover the harvested product. When they have filled four of the large bins, a tractor lines up with the harvesting rig and a conveyor transfers the large bins from the harvesting rig to the adjacent vehicle. The large bins are then transported to the nearby processor, where they go straight into a cooler until they are processed into packaged salad.
Important Harvesting Factors to Consider
Although the footage makes this seem as though it is a seamless process, there are a lot of moving parts. The harvest crew has to keep up with each other, the machinery, and maintain the harvesting rig in a sanitary condition.
The moving parts are:
- The harvesting rig that is moving along with the tractor that is steering it
- The workers
- The conveyor belt moving the harvested totes to the larger bins
- The conveyor belt that moves the large bins to the adjacent vehicle that comes to transport the harvested product
Food Safety Considerations
All of the things that need to be sanitized are:
- Harvesting tools (knives)
- Smocks/aprons
- Sleeves
- Packing table
- Conveyor belt
- All the rest of the harvesting rig
- Smaller harvesting totes
- Larger bins
Romaine Heart Harvesting Video
To see an overview of a romaine heart harvest and how romaine hearts come to be, check out the video below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this excess product disced back into the soil?
Yes. In the romaine heart harvesting process, there is a lot of product that does not get harvested. The product that is left in the field gets disced back into the soil. (However, there are a few operations that have started to try to make use of this product and will use it to make veggie powders and products of that sort.)
Why are romaine hearts commonly associated with food safety recalls and outbreaks?
The two primary growing regions for leafy greens in the United States are the Salinas Valley (in California) and the Imperial Valley/Yuma, Arizona region. Each region produces the bulk of the leafy greens for 4-6 months out of the year, and then the majority of operations transition to the other growing region (read more on that here). It is during those transition periods when the majority of food safety (recall and outbreak) issues occur.
Do romaine hearts need to be washed?
Yes. If there is no indication that they have been previously washed, you should wash them before eating with water only. (Click here for more tips on how to wash your fruits and vegetables.)
Featured Grower Information
I would like to thank GreenGate Fresh and Fresh Avenue for the visit and for allowing the gathered content to be shared. GreenGate Fresh is a leafy greens grower and processor located in Salinas, California.
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It baffles me that anyone wants pale lettuce. I’d rather buy a whole bunch/head with green leaves but that’s getting harder to find. So wasteful. Sad.
Nice work. I’m assuming that they plow the leftover greens back into the earth and replant? Do they switch up crops or is this a one crop farm?
Yes, all of the extra material gets disced back into the soil. The crop rotation is dependent on the grower.
The heart is the bit for the bin and use the green leaves….but where are they?
I want to know how they get the hearts packaged so tightly into the plastic bags. Are they grown INTO the bags from some point in their growth?