Maybe everything is bigger in Texas. But, when it comes to lettuce, Chef Matt Schaefer has a soft spot for the little guys. He has a particular penchant for The Chef’s Garden ultra-sized lettuces. But you’d be hard pressed to nail him down on a single favorite variety. “I like to mix them up, mainly for color, to give people something different than what they’re used to,” he said.

If lettuce can be breathtaking, then this lettuce is breathtaking. Gazing over the rolling expanse of colors and meticulous order in The Chef’s Garden’s lettuce fields is a wonder to behold.

As the sun rose early Monday morning, a lazy-moving tractor drew its sharp blades gently across the land, coaxing open the soft soil, awakening it after a long winter’s rest. A few hours later, a team of men inched their way along perfectly straight parallel lines, tucking tiny tufts of lettuce into their new outdoor homes.

At The Chef’s Garden, we have experimented with 100+ varieties of lettuce, narrowing that down to 20 to 25 of our chefs’ favorites. Plus, we always have eight to ten new varieties in research or trial stage, each of which thrive in cooler weather.

Farmer Lee Jones calls petite mixed lettuce one of his “absolute favorite products,” in part because these perfectly-sized heads of lettuce “look as if they were just plucked out of the earth.” The Chef’s Garden hand harvests petite lettuce using scissors, which means that chefs can use them on their plates in their natural-looking full forms.