Freshness never tasted So Good!

[digitS']

It is salad season again .

The radish and bunching onions are in plentiful supply! Sowing radish seed in the open garden during the hottest weather of the year, worked! The bunching onions have been on their long route from the greenhouse in late winter all the way to the kitchen table in September. In fact, they have been available for weeks, but - had to compete with young sweet onions. Of course, those are large sweet onion bulbs now and still an alternative.

The lettuce is Freckles and Salad Bowl. I ran out of the Nevada Summer Crisp and Romaine just a couple of weeks ago, altho' it seems longer. These tender things got their start in that summer heat, also! The cooling outdoor temperatures should mean they hold up well - and that's what it looks like, at least in the short run, cooling at last.

Some chopped tomatoes of all sorts of varieties! . . . splash on the Italian dressing!

Steve

 

[baymule]

How does it feel to be ahead of southerners for a change? You are waaaay out in front of me-haven't even got lettuce seed in the ground yet! It is just now time to get it planted. Your lettuce looks so beautiful. Why is it that lettuce is in season after the tomatoes are all dead for the year? :/

 

[Carol Dee]

Our lettuce crop went bust early. It got too hot and no rain in over a month. Maybe we should try a fall crop!

 

[digitS']

I didn't plant more lettuce seed in August.

That hasn't worked well here. The plants get about 3" tall and stop growing. Finally, winter arrives.

These are transplants. The seed was sown in flats in the backyard, mostly, in the shade of a tree. That was how all the lettuce was started this year - none, directly sown in the garden. Well, the earlier plants were started in the greenhouse, not under the tree. It is a bit difficult for them to get started and grow in the summer heat and the shade at mid-day helps.

Little bunches of plants go out in the garden beds. These are actually 3 to 5 plants together. The larger plants can be cut at the soil surface and the smaller plants can have another week or so to grow. Transplanting is easier for me when I don't have to separate out the plants. I've used 6-packs in flats and that works fine - just have to be careful how many seeds I put in each.

Steve

 

[journey11]

That looks so good! I've been stuck buying salad lately. My red romaine didn't come up at all and it was a packet for 2013 besides. :/

I like the idea of putting the bunching onions in with something else. They take f.o.r.e.v.e.r to amount to anything, hardly deserving of a row of their own.

 

[digitS']

These followed bok choy transplants from the hoop house. They did well and were replaced by the lettuce . . . which was replaced by more lettuce . . .

I'm not sure if this was all that wise of a succession. Bok choy & lettuce both attract slugs and earwigs but this seems to have worked fine.

It could be that in a more humid climate, I wouldn't have gotten away with this - not without pesticides to stop those 2 pests, anyway.

Steve
Oh, and the radish followed the late-planted peas (not the latest-planted peas, tho'). I will need to remember that I can get away with that - I did have to spray the radish for flea beetles. But anyway, those peas came out in late July and some radish seed was handy . . . hardly believe that they didn't burn up!

 

[Collector]

That looks great, I tried our lettuce in rain gutters this year. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but we had no lettuce this year.

 

[digitS']

Also had . .

. precious little rain, Collector.



Steve