OTTAWA, Ohio – Mention vegetable farming and foods like beans, corn, beets, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower and a few others come to mind. And more times than not, growers mix and match many of these vegetables in their fields.

But not Bryan Kaufman, of Ottawa. Lettuce is his specialty. No other crops. No beans, no corn, just lettuce.

Rows and rows of Bibb lettuce fill one of his greenhouses, and the plants are in different stages of growth. Some are very tiny as they reach upward to the grow lights just four inches overhead. Others are fully grown, ready to be processed and taken to different locations to be eaten as an addition to a hamburger or as a salad.

“We started with hydroponic tomatoes in 2003, then we switched to all Bibb lettuce in 2005. Lettuce has been a steadier crop,” said Kaufman, owner of Kaufman’s Hydroponics. “We started with one greenhouse, and we just kept adding.”

The son of a local farm family, Kaufman is now the premier Bibb lettuce producer in the Lima region, supplying schools and local eateries with fresh, organic lettuce year-round.

Working with his wife and children, Kaufman now manages four greenhouses, each 22 feet wide by 130 feet long.

Hydroponic farming involves using only water, not soil. The water feeds plant root systems with the necessary nutrients, thanks to a pumping or drip system. The planting style has become more popular and accepted the past 20 years as new growing methods are explored and developed.

The lettuce grown by Kaufman and his family is primarily sold to 12 local restaurants, as well as local schools and Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

Getting into the hydroponics farming business was a change of pace for Kaufman. He was working at a local grain elevator before he decided to teach himself about hydroponic agriculture. He studied everything online and read books about the subject.

The family first grew organic beef steak tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, but Kaufman said that was a hard endeavor for various reasons. Two years later the business reverted solely to Bibb lettuce. Growers like the Kaufmans believe there is an opportunity to disrupt the lettuce trade, which is largely dominated by growers in California who ship products to markets in the Midwest.

“The main reason we decided on hydroponics is because you can grow your crop year-round,” Kaufman said. “You can control the environment, use no pesticides. Restaurants really like that these days.”

Case in point is Hometown Roots in downtown Henderson, Ky. Owner Casey Todd has turned his business into a farm-beside-table restaurant, serving food that is grown locally and delivered fresh by the farmer to the restaurant. Todd has installed a grow wall inside Roots and is hydroponically growing Bibb lettuce that will be harvested and served in salads.

The grow wall is a custom-designed and fabricated cabinet with six shelves where 36 Bibb lettuce plants are being raised by feeding them nutrient-rich water directly to their roots and assisted by grow lights.

“Before we opened up (August 2018) I wanted a grow wall,” Todd said. “To this extent? No.”

His high-end hydroponic system comes with a smartphone app for monitoring its operation as well as sensors that monitor and adjust the nutrient water’s pH, among other technological tools.

Lettuce is a favorite among much larger growers as well. On the southwest side of South Bend, Ind., one will find lettuce growing on six acres. The lettuce company, Pure Green Farms, is a hydroponic indoor farm that produces 5,500 pounds of lettuce per day, all destined for markets in the Midwest. The company employs 20. The initial investment for this huge undertaking was $25 million.

It’s like a warm day in early summer inside this building of 174,000 square feet, which uses computers and monitors to control light, liquid nutrients, temperature, humidity and even plant-loving carbon dioxide.

The facility is under the guidance of Matt Gura, director of operations at Pure Green Farms.

“We use 90 percent less water than field-grown lettuces,” Gura said. “I believe it’s the future of growing.”

Nothing is wasted. The nutrient mix that isn’t consumed by the plants is collected, cleaned, tested and reused. The peat material in the growing trays will be composted and used for other agricultural purposes.

Ceres Partners, an agricultural investment firm, studied the project for several years before making the initial investment into this venture. Like the Kaufmans, this company believed there was an opportunity to disrupt the lettuce trade, which is largely dominated by growers in California who ship products to markets in the Midwest.

“There’s 55 million people within a 300-mile radius,” said Joe McGuire, CEO of Pure Green Farms. “There’s 75 million people within 400 miles. That distance gives Pure Green a significant shipping advantage over traditional leafy green producers that are located in California, Arizona and other far-away locations.”

By the time lettuce is harvested and processed in California, for example, it might take 10 days to reach store shelves in the Midwest. Conversely, the romaine, arugula and leaf lettuces grown at Pure Green could be on store shelves in a couple of days or less.

Picking South Bend as its home was a stunner to many. “There’s more sunlight there than most of us realize,” Gura said. “The fact that it doesn’t get too hot in the summer means that the cost of trying to keep the building cool won’t be out of line.”