Lettuce

I had two lettuce beds, the first I'll get to later. This one is the one I'm going to try to keep doing succession plantings all summer long. If experience tells me anything it won't work. The weather will get too hot. I'll forget to sow. The groundhog will eat it all. But I attempt to do it most years.

I had some germination problems in my second succession sowing. Three plants came up, but three did not. After a week or so I resowed. But these three aren't much bigger than the third succession. So I'll end up with a lean week at some point. That point isn't now though. I picked three of the heads from this bed. Two Deertongue and a Red Sails. All the seeds are from a summertime mix.

I left the other three large ones. Two are romaines and they take longer to head up. And I just love the red romaine. It looks so beautiful. I can't help but take photos of it.

And speaking of romaines, in the first bed that I planted out, I left the Paris Island romaines in the bed as it hadn't headed up yet. Well it was pickable now and I needed its space, so out they all came. One head had earwigs in it. Ick. I hate that. I hope I got them all out before bringing it inside.

The only lettuce I left was the Red Sails. I'm leaving it for seed. It really is the loveliest Red Sails plant I've ever grown. And huge. The bed was planted up with melons - Halona, Sensation, and Diplomat. I hope the one Diplomat planted behind the lettuce grows well. That lettuce will get pretty tall once it blooms. I've never grown Diplomat before which is a galia type melon. All in all there are eight melon plants.

I store my lettuce in a big plastic tub lined with a damp cotton towel. But that basket of lettuce won't fit in the tub. I put what I could into it. It fits about three heads of lettuce if you compress them a bit. And I wrapped up three heads in a damp towel and put them in a plastic bag in the back of the fridge for later. The rest went to my townhouse mates. To them I'm the greens fairy. And yes they call me that.