Celebrate the culture of agriculture & share skills (Growing! Cooking! Eating!)

Search Results - hoop house

Blog Post: It's Official...We're Looking for Land

It's official. We're looking for land.

It's been unofficial for a while. Like the few years of dreaming in Portland, when I didn't quite know how the farm would fall into place. Then I met…

Added by vanessa jean at 11:15pm on February 27, 2012

Topic: Growing Lettuce 101: good ideas germinating! WHAT TO PLANT When most people think of lettuce, they think of what they see in the grocery store: iceberg, green leaf, romaine, and perhaps red leaf. But with more than 200 heirloom varieties available from places like Seed Savers and Fedco, there are so many other kinds out there. So why plant boring old green leaf when the sky is the limit? For your home garden, you might consider butterhead/bibb, lollo, oakleaf, and many more. There are speckled lettuces, such as forellenschluss; there are crispheads, such as igloo and red Grenoble; there are red and purple romaines; and so many more. A lettuce patch with many different varieties and colors is one of the most beautiful sights in the spring or fall garden. WHEN TO PLANT Lettuce is a cool weather crop and does best planted in the spring and fall, when the daytime high stays below 75F, and nighttime temps hover between 40 and 60F. That said, lettuce can take much colder conditions with some protection, such as a cold frame or a row cover (or, for more advanced growers, a hoop house), which lets you grow into the winter months and get started earlier in late winter/early spring. Here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm, we start planting lettuce in mid-March and replant every week or so through the beginning of May. For great lettuce, it’s crucial to plant at least 30 days before the temps get really hot (in southwest Ohio, that’s early June). Otherwise, the plants will get heat stressed and become bitter and usually bolt to seed, as well. Likewise, you can grow lettuce throughout the summer, as long as your lettuce has ample shade and copious amounts of water. That means hand water morning and night, along with several mistings during the heat of the day. Because lettuce doesn’t really like heat, plants grown in temps above 85F tend to be bitter if allowed to grow to full size. If you want to plant summer lettuce, look for varieties that are described as slow to bolt and that can withstand hot weather. Green varieties do a lot better than red varieties in the heat. WHERE TO PLANT Plant in an area that will get at least five hours a day of good sun—unless you’re growing in summer, in which case you’ll want a cool, well shaded area that gets indirect sun. (You can use a 50 percent shade cloth or shade structures if you’re short on trees or other shade providers.) Just to be clear, lettuce can take full sun in spring and fall but not in the summer. HOW TO PLANT: STARTING SEEDS INDOORS AND TRANSPLANTING Start seeds indoors 2 to 3 weeks before you want to transplant them. I use soil blocks, but paper cups or egg cartons filled with a soiless mix will work fine, as will Jiffy pots and similar products. Do not use garden soil to start seeds; you want a mix with no fertilizer in it. You will need grow lights (that is, shop lights outfitted with T-8 bulbs or LED grow lights) that can be hung from the ceiling or a shelf and adjusted as the plants grow. Once the seedlings are 2 to 3 inches tall, they are ready to be hardened off in a cold frame for 3 to 7 days before you transplant them. If you skip the hardening off period, expect to lose 75 percent of your seedlings a day or two after transplanting. To transplant, you’ll need to have your planting bed ready to go. As for tools, you’ll just need a trowel and a full watering can, since the transplants need a good drink as soon as they go in the ground. To transplant, plunge your trowel into the soil and pull back towards your body. You now have a planting hole. Quickly pop the seedling into the hole and cover it up to the crown (the point where the leaves come out of the plant). Then go on to the next plant. When all the plants are in the ground, water them well. I like to put a soluble kelp product, like Maxi crop, in the water so they get a good feed, are less stressed, and can get on to the job of growing. The advantages to starting seeds indoors before transplanting outside are that you can get started 3 to 4 weeks earlier and you can space your seedlings correctly when transplanting in order to get as large a head as possible. On our farm, we grow more than 25 different kinds of lettuce, with 250 to 300 plants in a bed, so we generally start all of our lettuce indoors in soil blocks. But that’s for our larger scale operation. Home gardeners shouldn’t stress; sowing outdoors is fine. HOW TO PLANT: DIRECT PLANTING OUTDOORS Much easier than starting indoors. Rake your seed bed smooth, make a shallow trench in the soil, drop a seed in the trench every 4 to 6 inches, and cover with about 1/8 inch of soil. Do not plant lettuce deeply, as it needs some light to germinate. Water immediately after planting. HOW MUCH TO PLANT/ SUCCESSION PLANTING Some folks will get a packet of lettuce seed and plant en masse, with no thought to spacing. What those folks end up with is 100 to 150 small heads of lettuce that come in all at once and start to bolt within five days. (If you like bitter vegetables, the lettuce is very edible.) This leaves you stuck trying to consume many pounds of lettuce in a short period of time, which means most of the lettuce is wasted. Such a sad state of affairs doesn’t have to come to pass. The solution is succession planting, wherein you plant multiple small rounds at one-week intervals. Instead of planting one or two entire rows of lettuce all at once, you plant 1 to 3 feet of lettuce, with plants spaced 6 inches apart. That gives you two heads of lettuce per row foot, letting you really control and lengthen your harvest from one week of way too much lettuce to six weeks of just the right amount. WHEN AND HOW TO HARVEST: FULL HEADS To get a full head of lettuce, wait 40 to 60 days (the length of time depends on the variety; this information should be on the back of your seed packets), then go out and cut the head below the crown. You don’t want to wait too long, or the lettuce will begin to bolt and get bitter. WHEN AND HOW TO HARVEST: BABY LEAVES You can start to pull individual leaves at around 20 to 25 days, or when the leaves are about 2 inches long. Continue to pull leaves until the plant starts to bolt and develops a flower stalk. If you want to harvest a full head of lettuce, I don’t recommend pulling off leaves. If, however, you want to harvest baby leaves, I do recommend planting seeds much closer together. In other words, remember that newbie mistake I mentioned up above? Do that: Take a packet of seed (or about 1 tsp), make a shallow trench about 2 feet long, pour the seed into the trench, cover shallowly, and water. You will get hundreds of closely planted lettuce plants that you can cut or pull leaves from. This method will yield enough lettuce for a decent-sized salad every day for about a week to 10 days. As with head lettuce, you can succession plant using this method, and you’ll have baby salad greens for months. PESTS AND PROBLEMS Lettuce has several natural foes and diseases, all of which can be controlled organically through various means. For more on pests, check out the Natural Pest Control 101, and for more on pest, diseases, and lettuce in general, download this PDF from the Cornell Cooperative Extension. MORE THINGS TO GROW • From HOMEGROWN member Mary, Growing Radishes 101 and Growing Broccoli 101 • Also, Growing Garlic 101 and Growing Sprouts 101 • And more help: Selecting Seeds 101, Soil Testing 101, Raised Bed Gardening 101, Container Gardening 101, and Garden Planning 101 SPEAK UP! Got a hankering for green leaf but don’t have a green thumb? Have a lettuce issue that’s coming to a head? Post a question for Lucy or share your own tips below. You can dig up more things to sow early and often in the Fall Planting and Winter Planting 101s, and you can always find more things to plant, grow, make, craft, cook, preserve, and water in the HOMEGROWN 101 library. PHOTO: (LETTUCES) PETE AND IZZY’S MOM; (STARTS) RICH MILLIRON; (SEEDS) ANDREW ODOM; (OAKLEAF) CLARE; (CLOSE-UP) ANGIE THOMAS …; Added by HOMEGROWN.org at 3:24pm on February 29, 2012