My lettuce runneth over today. I have one huge bag left over from the garden ten days ago. I have two heads from my friend's CSA. And today I looked at my Red Sails lettuce and knew it had to be picked. You can just tell when it starts to get that leggy feeling to it. It is pick it or watch it flower. In a way picking it is so sad. I love the look of the red lettuce all bunched together. Now there is a gapping hole. But I didn't grow it as an ornamental so I had to be ruthless.
I have another veggie that I think will start out producing my ability to eat it too - my cucumbers. I picked one yesterday and another today. The photo is of one of my transplanted cucumbers. It looks like I have three more to pick very soon just on that plant.
I actually have two transplanted cukes and three direct seeded cukes. Cukes don't transplant well. They like to be direct seeded. However everyone nowadays seems to start them inside. Is it worth it? I certainly get my cukes earlier. Once my direct seeded ones start producing I'll know how much earlier. But they produced very quickly on small plants and it seemed to slow them down. My direct seeded ones have almost caught up on growth and are just starting to put out tiny flower buds. They may in the long term be more productive due to less stress.
Either way my cukes will produce way too much for me to eat in my salads. But unlike my lettuce, this is a good thing. I love pickles and an over abundance of little cukes means that I get to have lots of pickles. The old lettuce will just get composted.
Yummy. I love pickles! Better to have much than not enough. It makes it easier to make friends with the neighbors.
ReplyDeleteOh, I wish I could take some of that lettuce off of your hands! We have two bunnies that would love some homegrown lettuce!
ReplyDeleteBy the way how are your baby swallowtails doing?
I wish I could give it to you.
ReplyDeleteThe swallowtails are gone. They all grew to a certain size then disappeared. I'm assuming to turn into butterflies. If I start seeing a lot of black swallowtails around I'll let you know, but so far no butterflies.
Wow, that's quite a harvest of lettuce. I basically had to share mine with friends, coworkers, and family.
ReplyDeleteMy family lives in Colorado and Kansas, so too far away to share. I work at home. Most of my friends have CSAs or gardens with all the same excesses as mine. Though I have shared my peas and my cilantro with friends. The CSA most of my friends belong to only does peas if you go pick it, and the farm is an hour and a half away, so it is easy to get rid of my excess peas. My extra lettuce tends to get composted if I can't eat it all. I really try though. Lettuce really doesn't have a lot of calories, so it is easy to eat a lot. I have this ten inch wide bowl that I put my salad in for lunch. It takes a lot of lettuce to fill that up.
ReplyDelete