Fresh salad with home grown cherry tomatoes!

Late last summer, I started a cherry tomato from seed. Summer faded into fall with no results. It wasn't until November that my plant began producing some of the best cherry tomatoes I've ever eaten. It was now mid December and I was still enjoying them in fresh romaine salads!

Fall weather is a perfect lettuce growing time!

As most people know, lettuce likes cool weather. And, while most gardeners plant their lettuce crops in early spring, it’s actually even better if they think to include these in the fall months as well!

If you think about it, the fall provides plenty of warm weather early on to get seedlings up and growing, while providing cool and damp conditions later on. The lack of insects later in the season also helps the plants to reach their fullest potential. Most forms of lettuce, especially the romaine’s are not affected even when the temperatures dip below the freezing point. That makes them perfect for growing in cold frames where a harvest can be extended even into the winter months here in southwest Missouri! I also like to plant a few radish seeds as they mature fast enough to harvest before the real cold sets in!

A salad cost equalizer!

After spending close to two dollars for a head of iceberg lettuce last week, it was nice to be able to harvest a head of romaine lettuce that had volunteered from last fall. I’ve found that by mixing this up with my store bought lettuce, I was able to more than double the amount of lettuce I had for salads.

There’s really no trick to getting cut-and-come-again lettuce. Just make sure to leave a little bit of leaves when you harvest the first time and often times the head will grow right back. That’s what happened this time to some romaine that was harvested last fall just before the onset of winter. Even with the really cold temperatures we experienced, the lettuce re-grew over the early spring months. Cool!

Spring lettuce seed starts!

While life has gotten in the way of my garden plans for this summer, I am still making an effort to begin a few plants to help ease what happening at the grocery stores. This year I am once again planting a variety called Little Caesar romaine lettuce that is offered by Burpee Seeds. Romaine’s cannot be beat for nutrition and taste!

I elected to start my plants, this season, in peat trays that can be purchased at local garden stores. They help make the process fast and simple. For a stating soil mix, I’m using Miracle Gro potting mix which is sterile and already has fertilizer in it.

In the first picture, I’ve planted single seeds, one per cell in to the soil mix which has been dampened prior to planting. The whole process takes maybe a half hour with most of that time spent waiting for the soil to get damp. The seeds are then covered with a simple plastic baggie ( I like to re-use old baggies this way) and placed under a two bulb grow light to await germination. This usually just take three or four day as you can see in the second picture here.

September means cooler weather!

September is here and not a month too soon! Magically, the brutal temperature regime we had been experiencing in southwest Missouri has now moderated considerably. (As I write this tome, the mid-day reading was a very comfortable 72F). Part of this was due to overcast skies heralding arrival of the remains of tropical depression Hermine. (A much diminished low pressure system whose name could well be changed to Hermie).

With the official first day of fall arriving on the 23rd of this month and with a few days of rainy weather pending, I thought it might be a good idea to transplant my small romaine lettuce starts out into my small cold frames. Right now I have about twelve small starter plants with about ten more on the way. I plan to put a few out every week or so until I have the eleven square foot combined space used up. The soil will be amended with a little leftover blood meal I have in the basement and that will be pretty much it.

Sometime around mid October I expect to have some edible plants to harvest. Any remaining plants will be covered with window panes by the end of that month to help keep them warm and happy when the weather gets cold.

CF2 on the Way!

It's now mid November 2008 and we are now entering the time of year I like the least. The next fourteen weeks will see some of the coldest weather of the year and most of the trees will be bare. Thank goodness for my cold frame with its spark of spring greenery inside. It will soon have a friend when I install a twin unit next to it. I'm in the process of painting the frame and still need to purchase a soil amendment (vermiculite)to add to the 3 cubic feet of Miracle Gro potting soil bought at a store last week. I now have three trays of plants (lettuce and spinach) that need to be planted out soon, so I need to get to it as they say. The new cold frame will be referred to as CF2 and the original CF1. CF1's plants are going great. I'll try and post a current picture sometime soon. The average temperature in that frame has been about 54F which is near the ideal temperature to grow lettuce and spinach at.

Over the next weeks they are forecasting a series of cold fronts about every other day with lows getting into the twenties. This will be a real test to see how well these guys can surviive.

How Much is Enough?

One of the first questions I’ve been asked when discussing raised beds is the space question. Just how much space do you need to support a family of four anyway? That’s a good question and the answer I always give is, ‘It depends.’ The variables to consider are the nature and type of produce you want to grow and how much of it you will realistically consume. Many garden veggies do not lend themselves to storage (lettuce for instance) and you really want to take a hard look at what you will need week to week. I’ve always used the gallon baggie method for measurement purposes here. I know, for instance that three lettuce plants, after they’ve been cut, washed and drained will fill the average gallon sized plastic baggie. I also know from experience that I generally have at least one salad per day (sometimes two as I’m on a constant diet). That bag will last me about one week as I like to mix a lot of other stuff in each salad. So, going by this method, you will need to grow enough lettuce to fill one to two bags per week per person. A family of four would (assuming everyone loves salads) would need to harvest eight plants per week. Using that rule of thumb, I would plant twelve new starts every week or so starting in early March for this region (zone 6). The Cole crop can be a combination of leaf, romaine, spinach or even chard depending on your tastes. One of the really fun things about growing your own is the natural variety that you have as one plant or another becomes available for harvest. More times than not, I find myself planting way more than I can consume, but that’s OK too as I always have neighbors that will take the excess or be happy to trade what they have too much of. Other vegetable can be treated in much the same way. Over time you will get a good feel as to the amount of plants that will work for you.