I love it when readers ask questions about the garden, because I take a lot of these things for granted and don't realize they are worth writing about. When you ask, it makes me realize that there are questions that I can answer, and it inspires a post like this one. It makes me relieved that I'm not just writing a bunch of drivel into a vacuum. It could still be a bunch of drivel, but at least it's not into a black hole -- hey, whaddayaknow! Someone's out there to comment and question!
This has turned into one heck of a long post. I've changed the settings on the blog so that my full posts are readable in feedreaders, not just excerpts, so if you must, go ahead and skim or do a drive-by reading. I don't really like that, because I want you to actually visit my blog, and comment, dognammit. (We're bloggers. We love comments.) The list of blogs that I can actually get to, read, and comment upon has shrunk dramatically, so I'm as guilty as the next person on that score. I'm sorry about that, and I'll admit to being totally selfish in that regard.
So I'll try this for a while and see how it goes. It is sometimes hard to find the time to click in, I know, and yesterday I had trouble getting my own blog to load -- it must have been a Typepad glitch -- and that's why I changed the settings.
Our friend Kim recently asked some good questions about lettuce and when to cut it and how and when to replant it to extend the season. Who knew I could have so much to say about the humble lettuce? I really didn't realize it until she asked.
But wait, it's not really so humble, the lettuce. There are the three or four varieties you find in the grocery store, but that's not the end of the lettuce story. There is really so much more.
I love lettuce and lettuce blends. I like the sweet, the crisp, the green, the pale, the dark, the mottled, the red, the slightly bitter, the buttery, the bland, the exotic, the pedestrian.
Having the garden inspires so much creativity in food preparation.
Lunch yesterday: Local smoked turkey with mixed greens from the garden, on Ezekiel bread with garlic scape mayo.
Seanna Lea the other day remarked that she'd need to look up some things, because I keep throwing around that word "bolt" and she has no idea what it means with regard to plants.
It means that the plant has basically given up the ghost and is trying to send out flowers, then seeds. That is really what a plant is meant to do, you know -- make seeds for the survival of the species. When a particular plant has come near the end of its growing season or it undergoes some sort of environmental stress such as too much heat, humidity, rain or drought, the plant sends out -- in the case of lettuce and spinach for example -- a tall center stem with flower buds on it. Here is a photo of a lettuce plant that is just starting to bolt:
This one is still doing fine and is edible and probably salvageable, but that center stem should not be there. Lettuce should be a nice short, bushy plant (except for tall Romaines, but even they should not have a tall center stem -- unless you want to grow it for seed, that is).
When lettuce bolts, the leaves are all but inedible -- bitter to the extreme. So the point with these crops that prefer cooler weather (all lettuces, most greens, radishes, etc.) is to keep them young and keep them watered, and perhaps shaded, so they will not bolt when it turns hot and humid, because they will as soon as you turn your back.
So plant early and plant often -- I sow a few new seeds every week or two so I have a continuous supply of new salad materials throughout the season. Even then, there are sometimes high-heat-and-humidity conditions that make it futile.
Some people have the mistaken idea that you should harvest the "outer leaves." I say bunk on that one. That just encourages the center to grow up and that is not what you want, especially in lettuce and spinach. You want to pinch back the center in the case of spinach, and you want to cut the lettuce almost to the ground, like so:
Items in photo are larger than they appear. These are cut about, oh, 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch from the ground, though some larger pieces of leaves are left.
The ones below are the same variety of lettuce, the seeds were sown at the same time (Hank's garden, remember?), and I cut these and watered and fertilized with Gardener's Supply's all-purpose organic fertilizer, two or three days ago. See how much bright red regrowth has already occurred?
Here is an older bed of lettuce that has been mature and producing quite a few cuttings already this season. It is a delicious seed mix of lettuces and greens labeled "Paris Market Mix" from Renee's Garden, though my seed packet was from last year and seems to be lacking the reds that are in the description. Still, a wonderful salad blend. I need to buy more.
I cut this one back three days ago, watered it heavily and gave it a feeding of Starbucks coffee grounds, and it's growing back vigorously already.
It's important, by the way, to cut the lettuce in the cool of the day, preferably in the morning, and water it after you cut it. Avoid cutting it in the midday sun, and don't water it in the sun, either. Each drop of water will act like a magnifying glass in the sun and burn the leaves.
A little feeding of liquid kelp or any other high-nitrogen natural fertilizer, given every week or couple of weeks, does wonders, too, as does lime in my soil (your soil may vary). And this cut-and-come-again culture does not work very well with head lettuces like iceberg or butter lettuce -- they just produce one head per plant and then they're done. Technically you can do it, but I have found it not worth the effort. I just plant more. I find it not that successful with Romaine, either, unless it's cut as a baby lettuce.
After a while, even the best-cared-for cut-and-come-again lettuce gets tired. So I rip it out, add compost or a touch of balanced organic fertilizer, and put in new seeds. These germinated practically overnight this week:
They'll be ready to eat in about 3-4 weeks -- sooner if I harvest them as microgreens. Or maybe not at all if that rabbit finds the garden. Eek.
Then what do I do with it, you may be wondering.
After I cut the lettuce in the morning, I bring it in the house immediately, before it has a chance to wilt. I fill a sink with water and pour in quite a lot of salt. I buy the cheapest salt I can find for this purpose. The salt pulls the earwigs, caterpillars, and slugs, if any, away from the leaves, and kills them (or at least makes them damn sick) so they wash down the drain. I swish the salt around in the water to dissolve it, and I usually add some vinegar to the water, as well. I have no scientific basis for this, but I feel that the vinegar helps to clean the lettuce of lots of undesirable things that might be on it -- it is growing outdoors, you know. There are birds and dogs and cats, and, well, I just think the vinegar makes me feel better about all that.
Throw in the leaves and soak and swish them around in the water for a while.
Gently pull them out in handfuls and place in a large bowl or colander while you drain out the first sinkful of water. Look at the dirt and debris in there:
Sometimes there are more bugs and slugs, but this time there were hardly any.
Now fill the sink up again with just plain water for a final rinse and do the same soak/swish maneuver. Pull the leaves out. Once in a while, if there has been a tough rainstorm that has washed
dirt up underneath the leaves, you will have to individually wash some of the
leaves under running water, but usually the sinkful-of-water method is my only method.
Abigail gave me my beloved salad spinner for Mother's Day 1995 or '6.
This thing must have been used 4,999 times so far. It is the best! I usually take the leaves out of the sink and put them in here, spin them dry, and put the whole shebang into the crisper drawer in the refrigerator. This works the best of any method I know to crisp up and keep fresh salad greens. Love it!
Grab greens as needed.
Of course, sometimes there are still greens in this thing and I have more to process. That's why I recently bought the two Salad Sacs I mentioned the other day. Still, we are only two people (usually), and that's a lot of greens. But we do a pretty good job of using them up. This time of year we eat salad at least twice a day, and not a small amount of salad, but huge dinner salads. I'm only sad we don't have a longer growing season.
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