Lovely Lettuce
Check out my gorgeous (and delicious) lettuce, growing in two Earth boxes on the front porch.
We use the harvest method of cutting outer leaves as we want them and they just keep on producing and producing. The location means I can move them more into the shade as the weather gets warmer.
No slugs either!
For anyone who wants more info on growing lettuce and greens, here’s the article that appeared several weeks ago.
May 16, 2012 - 3:42 PM
That’s great…I grew romaine lettuce last year with great success, but am passing on it this year since I did not get around to expanding my gardening area. I’ll take a read through the article for sure, because I am always trying to figure out ways to maximize yields off what we grow.
I have replanted my lettuce 3 times! Now, I am finally getting some lettuce to come up, but I am way behind LOL. I believe it is black seeded Sampson. It is my first year with my own garden, so I’m planting what my dad has bought for me to use at this point LOL
Nurse, my lettuce has been terrible also. Green Ice never came up. Red Sails, only very spotty. Best, and what I’ve planted in years past was black seeded simpson also. Would take over a tomato planter. Never tried romaine tho but have wanted to. And never had any luck with any type head lettuce.
Last year I started Tom Thumb lettuce (from Pinetree Gardens Seed Company) inside. It forms small heads that are about big enough for an individual salad and transplants well into garden beds. I order most of my vegetable seeds from Pinetree because they are a small company, their packets have about the number of seeds I want to plant without having too many to carry over, and because they offer mixed packets of beet and cabbage seeds (also hot peppers, lettuces, others)that extend the harvest season with several different varieties.
Yes, my lettuce did not do well either. Though the Black Seeded Simpson from last year re-seeded and is all over the garden doing well.
Something that I tried this year and it has not worked too well – I made my own seed tape. I took some cheap unscented toilet paper and sprinkled mesculm seed down the length of it in a row. Then folded the toilet paper over the seeds and lightly sprayed water on it. I planted that in the garden. Only some of the seeds came up.
Maybe lettuce could be having a hard time germinating and growing in this weird spring weather. The spinach, kale and beets have done fine.
All of my tomatoes, peppers and sweet potatoes are now outside “harding off” before being planted.
Just got a message your e-mail was invalid. Could you post the current addy. Thanks. Got a question I want to ask before I post.
You can email me at nrvgardener@yahoo.com.
I tried putting my tomato plants out to “toughen up” before planting and they started wilting like crazy! So I have them back inside, under a bright bulb and feeding them with a half mixture of Miracle Grow. They are starting to look better again. I’m almost resigned to keep them in for a while longer. I may not get them out in the garden until mid-June if this keeps up.
On a bright note, my green beans are coming up like crazy! I have 2 watermelon plants that are starting to poke through the ground and my lettuce is at least trying to make an appearance. My onions that survived are starting to look better and really come on now. I’ve heard many people say they are having trouble with their onions this year.
John in Prices Fork. Talked to a fellow on the city market that has a big orchard. He says fireblight. Some of his trees have it too and he sprays for everything. Said the blight was late this year so the spray didn’t stop it. From what I found, it can’t be killed, only controlled. Cutting a 1″ or so back from the damaged tip and totally removing all trimmings out of the garden is some control. And it seems that a mixture of vinegar and water is as good as any to spray with. And he says it absolutely doesn’t affect the fruit, so it’s safe to eat it.
We are planting a couple of our tomato plants and a couple peppers in the garden today. We are keeping the rest in their pots for now. My onions and shallots are doing fine but the little bunching onions I planted have not come up yet. Time to replant them.
The low here yesterday was 47 so still too cool to plant too much in the garden.
TEST. 1:46 PM.
3:12 PM.
DC, what would you guess the ground temp to be, say 3″ deep?
wd – not sure what the ground temp is but I would say less than 60. I have not heard any katydids yet. We had a low of 47 the other morning and tonight it is supposed to get down to 45 in Check,VA -though I feel it will be lower here. Also tomorrow night looks to be in the low 40′s too.
wd – I would guess the ground temp to be below 60 and probably down around 50 – here. We had a low air temp of 47 yesterday and calling for a low of 45 tonight and mid 40′s on Sat. night. That is for Check, VA but it always seems to be a little cooler here.
I will try submitting again – previously it said I had a duplicate comment – oops.
oops – sorry about that folks – extra comments.
test 2
10:45 AM
Post time–11:36 AM.
In case anybodys wondering about the test posts, they were simply that. The old captfha[gotcha] code eat a bunch of posts as did timing out if you had to leave the pute for awhile. This is much more user friendly. Thanks RT. One more thing KH, how do I get the time back in correct order? It shows my posts being posted 4 hours later than actual. Thanks.
Preserving and canning. This post will deal with fruit only. I t might seem a little early to be talking about how to put your stuff up since some folks are just now finishing setting it out, but it’s not really. Before you can put it up, you need to have the supplies to do it. A list of some things come to mind. Since this is about fruit, I’ll limit it to what goes into making perserves. This will be old hat for a lot of folks posting here, but for anyone starting out, you might find it useful. On with the list. Sugar, jars, lids, rings, pectin. Supplies always dwindle as canning season gets in full swing, and good buys are not to be found. Most all forms of perserving jams, jellies require sugar. Which will be one of the costliest supplies you’ll need. Unless you do it the ole timey way, which nobody does anymore. Strawberries are the first fresh fruit you’ll getm however, this year they have come and gone around 3 weeks early. Next up would be cherries, rasberries and wine berries, then blackberries. There usually is a crop of June apples also[early transparents] that make great applesauce. Then peaches and apples. The list goes on with huckleberries, wild grapes and some others. With the exception of applesauce, I never pressure can. You old hands jump in here and add, correct me. And now is the time to look at a pressure cooker[22 qt. is the only ones I have or would recommend due to capacity] also for your vegetable canning, along with jars. They tend to get scarce mid summer also. Won’t get into freezing since I don’t do it. Besides KH put an article up last fall on that subject I think.
Liked your article on raising taters KH., and timely advice also. Lazy mans potatoes.
Thanks wdbrand! I’m in favor of lazy gardening, whenever possible.
Nurse Dry Garden-Try putting your tomato plants outside on a porch where they won’t get any direct sun rays for a few days. The indirect light will harden them. Plants, just like gardeners, can’t take too much sun at once at the beginning of summer. Another possibility would be to prop window screens over the plants providing enough shade to ease them in. D Carol, the only tomatoes not in the ground here yet are your two monster sized ones. Several of my small varieties (Juliet, Matt’s Wild Cherry, Nugget) are starting to bloom. Staking and mulching as I planted has been helpful this time. We used to wait several weeks after planting and the tomato vines did not like being down in the dirt. I have four rows with 16 plants per row (plus a few plants in raised beds here and there). I used mostly straw over a newspaper base layer for mulching but did buy enough red plastic mulch to cover 2 of the walkways between plants.
Deep Roots and I exchanged tomato plants earlier in the spring and we have been growing them inside. Deep Roots – your tomatoes and our first batch of tomatoes are now in the ground. We did have to cut them back some. LOL! My heirloom tomatoes are not ready for the garden just yet. Also The Man of the House has a tray of tomatoes waiting to go in the garden.
wdbrand – yes – it is time to be thinking about preserving and canning. I agree that jars and supplies will become scarce as the season progresses. I use a water bath canner for everything though I freeze green beans. The jams and jellies go in pints or half pints jars. I also can my salsa, applesauce, blueberry pie filling, pickles, pizza and spaghetti sauce in pints. I use the quarts for apple pie filling, tomatoes and grape juice. Deep Roots has a juicer/steamer (from Finland) and we borrowed it and used it a couple times last summer. We steamed/juiced some peaches and then a batch of grapes. We canned the juice and can use it whenever to make jelly. I took the peaches that I steamed and put made a peach pie. We really liked the juicer so we ordered our own this spring. I am looking forward to making tomato juice with it. (We ordered ours from Lehmans.)
I’ve been told that today and tomorrow are the days to get your cucumbers in the ground. Something about the signs and such LOL. I think that you are supposed to plant in the sign of the twins to get plenty of fruit. I guess I need to get myself a farmers almanac to keep up. I took the plunge and put my tomatoes in a raised bed yesterday. I’m really hoping that they will make it.
Funny little story! My hubby knows nothing about plants or gardens at all. He is being a trooper and really trying to help me this year. Since our tomato plants haven’t been doing great, he went and bought 10 while I was at work on Friday and planted them in the garden. He fertilized and watered them and was so proud of himself. I went to the garden to look at them, waited for him to tell me all about it, then sadly informed him that he had just planted 10 green pepper plants, not tomatoes! Someone at the store had stuck the wrong plant info in 1 pot, and he thought he was purchasing tomato plants. Needless to say, I have an added plant I wasn’t planning for, and I have now shown him the difference in the leaves.
Out of curiousity, what was the name of the so called tomato?
I think they were “Better Boys” wd.
I’ve put in some tomato plants that look like pepper leaves when they are small. Latest ones are Brandywine. Proof will come at blossom time. If they are yellow, it’s a tomato, altho other color blooms are possible on some select varieties of tomatoes. White blooms, = peppers.
Yes, it is time to stock up on the jars and other canning supplies. Also a good idea to have some sugar on hand if you are going to be making jams or applesauce.
Deep Roots and I exchanged some tomato plants that we had started earlier and had grown tall enough for pruning. All of those are now in the garden and a half tray of some we started from seed. Still have the other half of the tray and then I have an entire tray of heirloom tomatoes I started from seeds from last year.
Deep Roots shared her Juicer/Steamer with us late last summer and we enjoyed using it to make some peach juice and grape juice concentrates. We canned that and then can use it to make jellies whenever we want. I used the peaches from the juicer and made a pie. We enjoyed the Juicer/Steamer so much that we have purchased our own (from Lehmans) and are looking forward to making juice from our strawberries, blackberries, red rasberries and of course tomatoes.
Nurse Dry Garden loved the comment about your husband purchasing “tomato” plants. You can freeze the peppers or use them with some of the tomatoes and make your own salsa.
Used the son’s metal detector this past weekend and could not find that other buried bucket of potatoes. Now the Man of the House thinks he only buried 2 buckets instead of 3. LOL!
Gardening LOL…there’s a potential column. I just submitted a lovely story without checking the YOU ARE human box (ironically, that is quite a human move) so I’ll condense my second telling and say when gardening with school children, don’t expect the most carefully labeled popsicle stick markers to be accurate. With our elementary school greenhouse, we learned that tomato varieties can get scrambled very easily. Adults didn’t always appreciate this but kids really got excited over the “mystery tomatoes” we ended up marketing.