Racing the Sun To Get Lettuce Planting Done

I consult the LSU AgCenter Vegetable Planting Guide to let me know when to plant items in our growing zone, how deep to plant the seeds and how far apart to space them.  As I was perusing the Planting Guide, I realized that September 30th is the last date recommended for planting lettuce in our area.  So when I got home from work on September 29th, I got my rear end in gear.  I had a 15 foot long row all worked up and weed-free.  Its 30 inch width was perfect in allowing me to plant seeds in three furrows I made across the top of the row in which to place the tiny lettuce seeds.  You can see the furrows below if you look closely.

Furrows in the Lettuce Row - ready for planting

Let's talk a little bit about lettuce.  I like salads.  I like to add different toppings and vegetables and a nice vinaigrette dressing on top.  Let's be honest, though.  Salads aren't filling.  Will they help you to survive in very difficult times when food is short?  Hmmm, probably not.  In survival cases, your garden better contain root crops like potatoes, carrots and the like that contain more calories and nutrition than lettuce.  But for non-apocalyptic times, a fresh garden salad is a nice complement to a meal.

I have five different varieties of lettuce that I'm planting on our lettuce row:

• Red Romaine
• Black Seeded Simpson,
• Red Wing Lettuce Mix
• Oak Leaf Lettuce, and
• Rocky Top Mix

I've alternated plantings into five separate blocks, separated on the row and alternating red and green coloring of the lettuce.  It ought to be pretty once it is up and growing.  I like to plant things that not only taste good, but that look good while growing.

Five different types of Lettuce

I learned a couple things last year about lettuce that I'll put into practice again this fall/winter.  In previous years, I would pull up the lettuce by the roots, harvesting the entire plant in order to make a salad.  I realized that this was very wasteful. Rather than do that, I started just pinching off leaves I wanted to eat.  This allowed me to have a nice mix of different types of lettuce in my salad and the lettuce will continue growing and putting on more leaves that we could eat.  In short, by doing this, your lettuce will yield more per square foot.  Also, by leaving the roots in the ground at the end of the growing season, the soil is loosened and  broken up by the growing action of the roots.

Another thing I did was I covered the lettuce with a tarpaulin overnight on nights that we had freezes, weighing down the tarp with landscape timbers to keep them from blowing off of the lettuce. By doing this we were able to enjoy fresh salads even deep into the winter, without experiencing frost damage or plant death.  As the temperatures rose above freezing during the day, I would pull the tarp off the lettuce and let it continue growing in the sunshine.

Lettuce seed is very small and lightweight.  You only need to cover it with 1/8 inch soil.  I first tried the Red Romaine Lettuce variety last year, when it came as a free item with my seed order from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  This is what the Red Romaine lettuce seed looks like:

Red Romaine Lettuce seed

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce is a variety that I've been growing for years.  It produces a nice bunch of lettuce and its bright green growth contrasts with the dark green leaves of surrounding broccoli and cauliflower.  I have better success growing lettuce in the fall and winter than I do in the spring.  It just gets hot too fast here in the south.  As a result, the lettuces bolts to seed and gets bitter-tasting very quickly. I've found that a fall planting alleviates that problem.  You can see why this lettuce is called, "Black Seeded" Simpson as you compare the picture above to the picture below.

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce

Red Wing Lettuce Blend is a new variety I'm trying this year.  Since it is a mix, you'll note the seeds are different.

Red Wing Lettuce Mix

This is a photo of a harvested bunch of leaves from the Red Wing Lettuce mix that I found online. That will make a nice looking salad, don't you think?

Image Credit

If you look at the first photo in this blog post, you will see that the sun was higher in the sky.  As I seeded the lettuce, I became aware that the sun was dipping in the western horizon at a quick pace, and that encouraged me to hurry it up with the task at hand.  I got all the lettuce planted, covered and then lightly watered the row, simulating a rainfall.

Lettuce Row Planted

Once the lettuce is up, I'll figure out a more aesthetic way of marking the different varieties of lettuce.

It's Not Spring, But Things are Green

After a couple frosts, the pasture is a dull brown color.  The leaves of the pecan tree and the water oak trees are falling.  The red, yellow and orange color of the autumn leaves are gone and replaced with brown.   Blah!  All this makes for a dreary landscape, except for the fact that a few things are still colorful outside.

Take for instance the Sasanqua Camelias in the flower beds around the house.  All summer long, their waxy, shiny, dark green foliage waits patiently, playing a background role amidst the pink azaleas, blue agapanthus, and yellow cassia.  And then each year around Thanksgiving when the other brilliant Spring and Summer flowers have faded, it's as if the sasanqua says, "Now it's my turn to shine."  Buds by the hundreds fill the plants and bloom the pinkest pink you've ever seen. They keep blooming and blooming and the petals of the older flowers carpet the ground beneath the plant as new flowers bloom to take their place.

Pretty in Pink

Before the sun punched out on the timeclock, I figured I would walk out and treat my eyes to a visual feast.  The first patch in the garden just a little over a month ago was a jungle of sweet potato vines. We harvested the delicious potatoes out of the rich soil and fed the vines and leaves to the cows.  Just tonight we enjoyed some baked sweet potatoes - actually put them in my chicken and sausage gumbo.

The sweet potato patch is now a turnip patch and the turnip greens are so green it almost hurts your eyes to look at them.  We'll eat a few of the smaller turnips, but this crop was primarily planted for the cows.  When day after day there's nothing for them to eat except hay, I cannot tell you how much they enjoy eating turnips. I'll pull a bucket full and feed them the greens.  Then I'll get my grandfather's pocket knife and slice chunks of turnip and feed it to the cows.  They'll crunch, crunch, crunch on the turnips, eating them like there's no tomorrow.  It seems they are never satisfied.  And then, one of them will burp.  A nasty turnip burp.  And it stinks - bad.  That is my signal to close up the pocket knife and call it a day.  But I have a lot of turnips planted, so we'll do the same thing tomorrow.

The Turnip Patch (Mainly for the Cows)

But we grow things for us too!  I was checking on the progress of our lettuce.  First I have a row of red romaine lettuce growing, but it has been growing so slowly!  It's our first year to try this variety. It certainly has a beautiful color - green on the bottom but then more "sun-burned" on the outer leaves.  I have to exercise my patience here.  These leaves, just as they are now, would be great in a salad - tender, tasty, scrumptious with a nice vinaigrette, some Parmesan and a few capers on top. But they would be all gone quickly.  I want to let them grow for 10 or so more days.

Red Romaine

But they need to hurry.  I went inside and quickly mixed up some fish emulsion in my garden sprayer and sprayed them real good with the smelly liquid fish.  This foliar feeding should hopefully make them jump.

Feeding them Liquid fish

On the next row I have a blend of different heirloom lettuces planted.  The name of the blend is Rocky Top Lettuce mix.  There are many different varieties in this blend.  They are colorful and delicious to just break off a piece and eat right out of the garden.

Rocky Top Lettuce Mix

I'm risking it here a little because a freeze would wipe them out.  I have read though in the reviews in the seed catalog that people have put plastic over them and they've made it through a freeze.  I'll watch the weather and if we have a freeze, I'll simply harvest everything and we'll eat salad for a few days.

Nice Baby Lettuce

I do much better with lettuce in the Fall than in the Spring.  In the Spring, it tends to get too hot too quick for the lettuce and the pest pressure is just too much for them.  I also have to watch out for a little pullet that can get through the holes in the garden fence.  Tricia's spotted her scratching and pecking around in the garden. She'd have a field day (literally) with my Rocky Top Lettuce mix!