Leafy Greens

My goal each year is to minimize the amount of time I have to buy lettuce/spinach/arugula at the grocery store. I eat a salad almost every day of the week so the longer it’s coming out of my garden the better. It’s not possible to grow anything outside in my location in January and February but if the weather breaks early and my spinach over-wintered successfully I can actually start supplementing my salads as early as March. See my post on spinach:

https://steemit.com/gardening/@garden-to-eat/growing-spinach

Arugula has a peppery taste and is great for spicing up your salad but unfortunately it has a short growing season and bolts very quickly in hot weather. Spring and fall are the best time to grow in my area.

In addition, I have a flea beetle problem in my garden. Flea beetles are tiny little black beetles that thrive on things like arugula, eggplant, radishes, and many young plants that are still tender. I’ll get more into controlling them when I talk about eggplant in another post.

Garden leaf lettuce is the main source for my salads spring, summer and fall. Lettuce grows best in a square and should have no problem germinating in the spring.

You can add some compost and fertilizer if you wish but if your bed already consists of rich soil additives probably aren’t necessary. Once your bed is raked smooth and even you can sprinkle your seeds directly on the surface. The seeds do not need to be buried deep so I just gently work them into the soil with my rake. Then I pat down the soil so the soil is firm.

One other thing, we have a lot of squirrels around which love to dig in newly prepared beds – mainly in the spring and fall not summer so much. I found that covering the bed with a row cover fabric for a while deters the squirrels from digging in the newly planted bed. Other than that not too much bothers lettuce as long as you have the rabbits and larger rodents fenced out. Slugs could present a problem if it’s too wet however so treat accordingly.

I start off the season with a quick maturing variety called Red Fire.

It is a nice looking lettuce with green and red leaves. It is supposed to mature in 30 days under perfect conditions. Of course we rarely have perfect conditions but 40 days is possible. My rule of thumb is to plant a new bed when I begin harvesting one. This gives me continuous lettuce throughout the season. It becomes difficult for lettuce to germinate as the soil temperatures rise in the middle of the summer so if you are in a hot area you probably will not be able to grow in the summer. The south end of my garden is shaded early afternoon on so this is the ideal place for me to plant my summer lettuce.

To pick lettuce (or any leafy green for that matter) pinch off the out leaves and leave the smaller inner leaves to grow. Use your fingers and not a knife and don’t pick in direct sun especially if it’s a hot day or your lettuce will be wilted before you get it to the refrigerator. Here is a before and after of a spinach plant I picked (lettuce was in the sun so I didn’t want to pick that but same idea)

After picking.

Give it a week and you’ll be ready to pick again.

If winter is slow in coming I can continue to pick lettuce in December and I’m fairly far north. Lettuce can hold up with nights below freezing so stretch the season as long as you can. Okay so much for lettuce. Let me know your thoughts and don’t forget to vote, etc…