Tuesday, February 12, 2013

SALADS GALORE - 15 November 2012

Lettuce never ceases to amaze me: it is such a quick and easy vegetable to grow.  It is pretty low maintenance too!  If you’re thinking about trying to grow something from seed: this has to be one of the best vegies to start with in my opinion!
This year, I’m growing spinach and raddichio with our lettuce and they are all doing really well.  We’ve got five different varieties of lettuce planted along with rocket and mizuna, and these have been a welcome addition to our salads. Rather than harvest a whole plant, we just take the outer leaves as we need them.  This works a lot better for us as it means no waste and we don’t get sick of having to eat salad all the time.  I just harvest excactly the right amount each time.
We also just pop out to the garden each morning to get lettuce for our sandwiches for lunch.  It is far more crisper given it has come straight from the garden rather than straight from the fridge.  I find that harvesting the lettuce in this way means we don’t get sick and tired of lettuce.
Fertilising this bed often (every 3 – 4 weeks to be exact) has attributed to excellent growth and the best lettuce crops I’ve ever had.
Sadly, I haven’t had a huge success with red lettuces this year and I recall reading in a gardening book recently that they like cooler temperatures…but I didn’t have any success with them over winter either.  Will have to do a bit more research into that me thinks!
 

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