This lettuce was planted the same time as our first radishes, and it doesn’t look happy.
Apparently that’s not a surprise:
The tricky thing about growing salad greens is that they are cool-weather crops. Lettuce seeds germinate best at 70 degrees F. When soil temperatures are below 50 or above 80, germination is spotty. Once the plants are up, optimum air temperature for healthy growth and best flavor is 60 degrees.
If you garden anywhere other than the cool Northwest, it’s unlikely you can offer these ideal growing conditions for more than about 60 days each year. The rest of the time it’s either too hot or too cold to grow decent lettuce.
But gardeners love a challenge….
—-How to Grow Salad Greens All Year
We have a lot more experimenting and learning to do, but that’s why the greenhouse is so much fun.
December 21, 2019
I didn’t know that about lettuce! but then I have a very black thumb! lol
I have new respect for lettuce I buy now. 😀 xoxo
maybe I should say I have new respect for the GROWERS of the lettuce I buy!
Me too!
There seem to be a huge variety of “lettuce” – maybe you need to look at a leafy herb type plant that would give that lettuce look…https://brownboxsoil.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/know-your-produce-lettuce-varieties/
I’m guessing the article will give us some ideas. We’re just getting started.
I was going to tell you to try cabbage but it is cool weather, too…going to be interesting to see what grows and what doesn’t.
The mushroom on my blog today was a morel mushroom….they are delicious breaded and fried, or I have pre-fried them a little and then put them in scrambled eggs. Yummy!
Thank you! I’m glad you found it.
Well, weren’t you pleasantly surprised by the radishes – maybe that lettuce will perk up and do the same:)
Woos – Lightning, Misty, and Timber
We’ll see, or try some different varieties. We picked a beet today, some leaves, no roots, but I like the greens better than the roots anyway. We’ll give them more time and see what happens.
I didn’t know lettuce was so fussy about its growing conditions, but then I suppose most plants only thrive in certain conditions. Personally I don’t care for lettuce, but I love radishes.
We didn’t know that about lettuce either. We’re learning a lot.
Don’t forget to read up on thinning your seedlings once they get a certain height. My mom worked at a large greenhouse (and I worked at the attached flower shop) and one of her jobs was thinning plants. I am so enjoying your greenhouse adventures.
We’re already thinning the radishes. The rest aren’t doing well enough to warrant it yet. We had a big garden years ago, until all the critters learned about it. 😀
Interesting. I didn’t know that about lettuce. I remember my dad growing some kind of leaf lettuce every year in his garden and I never cared for it. It always had a bitter taste to me.
There’s a good chance any lettuce we grow in the greenhouse will be bitter, but we’ll play around with it anyway. I did try eating the radish leaves and they’re not too bad. I also love beet greens, a lot more than I like beets.
I remember Dave’s mother growing leaf lettuce up north. She explained she liked leaf lettuce because you could pull off just a few leaves and leave the rest of the plant growing. I found that an interesting thought.
Yes, years ago we grew that. It was a lot more practical than head lettuce.