There's too much else to do these days than to spend time in the garden. The stores already have Christmas music and I need to come up with a Thanksgiving menu for 12 guests - not to mention keeping up with my paying job. My lettuce bolted this summer and out of curiosity I let it go to see what would happen. I may or may nor actually collect the seeds, but there are nice puffy seed heads in the garden now on my Romaine.
S&P
Lactuca sativa
5 comments:
My lettuce plants didn't produce seeds this year. I grew them in containers, and underestimated how much dirt was needed. The plants just got root bound, flowered a bit, but didn't develop any seeds.
A similar thing happened with my Añu Plant.
Oh well, there's always next year...
Thank you for posting a photo of your lettuce flowers. I am planning on saving lettuce seeds this season and I had no idea what I was to look for:)
OK - so I have a ton of seeds..at least I have stuff that looks like your picture...I hate to sound so totally stupid - but which part is the seed? When should I pick them? Do I cut the plant down to the ground once I do - or pull them out by the root and start over next year? How do I store the seeds? I assume once I know what they are, I should pick them off the plant and compost what's left? Well - I guess I'm rambling a bit. Sorry - just don't want them to go to waste and don't want to loose any if possible. :) Thank you soooo much for any help/answers you can provide. :)Tammy
Im with Tammy (person above). Ive been searching the net to try and figure out how to collect lettuce seeds for continued planting but to no avail I had no idea where the seeds came from until I saw the picture above. Is there anybody out there who can answer Tammys questions so both of us can sustain our Lettuce crops with out having to bring money into it. ????
The seeds will be the little pinhead sized things attached to the bottom of the fluffy white parachute. You should pull apart a mature lettuce seed head and look inside. It will look just like a small dandelion puff with tiny seeds attached to white fluffy parachutes.
Take the seed heads (or cut off the whole plant) and put them in a paper bag in a cool dry location for several weeks until dry. When dry, store them in a sealed baggie or jar. In the spring, crumble the seed head and plant it all. Its a lot of effort to separate the seeds from the rest of the dried parts, but you can use a screen if you want to do this.
Here are some links that may help:
Saving cilantro seeds at Uncle tom's cabin;
Saving all types of vegetable seeds at Oregon State Univ;
Seed saving for beginners at ISSI
I'll see if I can find some lettuce seed heads and post some photos soon.
As an aside, I was interested to find out that lettuce flowers are yellow and escarole and endive flowers are a pretty shade of blue (ie common chicory).
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