Sunday, June 7, 2015

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.

7 comments:

  1. Your townhouse mates must adore living near you! I have only just had a first, very small, harvest of lettuce (mostly due to poor germination early on). Your lettuce looks superb.

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  2. I love the Diplomat melons. I'm growing it and Sensation this year, along with Ambrosia. And that is a beautiful red romaine! Did you ever ID it?

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    1. No I ought to though. I've got the list of lettuces and could look them up to find out. I'll have to if I like the taste.

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  3. You have some beautiful lettuces, particularly the red romaine. I usually just pick the outer leaves and make a mixed green salad, unless the lettuce is about to bolt. That way I don't have t store a lot of lettuce in the fridge.

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  4. I grew my first red romaine this year, Ruby Gem, a small variety. It is absolutely gorgeous and tasty too. I wonder what variety your red romaine is. I don't have any in the pipeline right now because I'm trying a bunch of other lettuces, but I will definitely grow the Ruby gem again later this year.

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  5. I'm a great fan of the "Stayfresh" plastic bags. They keep stuff (particularly salads) fresh for ages - much longer than normal. I've never grown a lettuce for seed-collection before, mainly because lettuce seed is very cheap, and because I like to try lots of different varieties.

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  6. I'll chime in on how gorgeous that red romaine is. Hopefully it tastes as good as it looks!

    Last year, being so cool and wet, was such a great year for summer lettuce (except for the slug explosion, that is!). I'm wondering how successful I'll be if we have a normal summer around here.

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