today's harvest

This lettuce is Rouxai. I have no idea how to pronounce that, but I think this is my favorite lettuce. A beautiful deep red oakleaf with bright green interior. It tastes great and grows great in every season.

planting out extra lettuce

I had a few 6-packs of lettuce left over that didn't fit in my tunnel so I set up a second smaller tunnel for it. This little tunnel is just covered with a double layer of row cover fabric. I wonder if it will do OK. It depends on the weather we get.

my Thanksgiving lettuce (variety Sandy) survived the cold

Yes! It still looks great. This is a little area that's not under my plastic tunnel, so I want to pick it all for Thanksgiving. Its a great variety. Sandy. A 2015 AAAS Winner that I love. Sweet frilly green leaves. And - very cold tolerant!!

I have some escaroles, Frissee and Natacha, to mix with it. Also curly kale and baby beet greens. Maybe some mustard, Purple Streaks, and some tiny radicchio, Perseo, too. I see what kind of mix I end up with. The rest of the nights before Thursday will be warmer, so I'll stop worrying.

Soon I plant to go through all of the 2015 AAAS Winners that I grew this year and post their photos. Most did great for me. I think of December as sort of a "garden review" month.

today's harvest

today's harvest

Lettuce, bok choi and herb fennel. What do I do with all that fennel herb?! I bought is not realizing that bulb fennel and herb fennel are different.

watching lettuce grow

Ready for harvest - September 26, 2012

September 7, 2012

August 23, 2012

July 22, 2012

I took a series of photos of one of my lettuce beds. It is planted with Endive Dubuisson and Butterhead Green Ermosa. The bed is full now and we are enjoying them in salads. I pick the biggest or most crowded ones first and let the others grow.

lettuce varieties

I wanted to record photos of the lettuce varieties I am growing this fall. They are a nice mix of colors. All except the Simpson did well with the summer heat. The Simpson bolted and I had to harvest it before the head was full. I think the Skyphos has grown the slowest, maybe because it was under the squash leaves when it was small. I think it may also be the prettiest.

Butterhead Green Ermosa

Butterhead Red Skyphos

Red Summer Crisp Teide and Black Seeded Simpson

Green Summer Crisp Nevada

Can't say any of these are my favorites, like Big Boston or Prizehead or Oaky Red Splash.

Christmas Day lettuce harvest

I've been looking forward to harvesting lettuce on Christmas Day. In the snow. Not much left in the frame now, but enough for a bowl of greens for the Christmas table. They were very fresh and crisp. I picked spinach, baby beet greens, escarole frisee and curly red lettuce. I also added some baby kale for color.

I think this is my last harvest of the season. Maybe what's left in the cold frame will wait until spring and regrow when it warms up again. I've heard spinach is good at regrowing in the spring. We have heavy snow coming tomorrow night, so I'll replace the tarp covering tomorrow and see how the cold frame survives its first winter.

lots of lettuce

Still plenty of lettuce coming from my cold frame. I've been picking it for a full month now. I have about 10 heads left in the frame and by the time they're gone, the row I planted next to my tomatoes should be ready. I planted 4 9-packs with about 12 different varieties yesterday. I LOVE fresh lettuce!

my first harvest of the season - lettuce!

In previous years I have picked my first lettuce at the end of May or even early June. This year May 8!!! It has been a record warm spring here, but also my new cold frame is amazing.

Once I pick my first lettuce, I can usually avoid buying any supermarket lettuce until October. I bet the cold frame will extend the fall end of the season too.

cold frame lettuce

My seedlings in the big new cold frame are doing really well. I'm starting to think about getting the salad bowl ready. As soon as the water is turned on at my community plot (last year this was April 24), I will transplant them out there.

prime lettuce season

I am SO excited to have big heads of Boston lettuce forming. I haven't grown this variety before and it is just beautiful! I may have a new favorite lettuce variety. My old favorite, Prizehead, is doing good too.

It seems that the slugs prefer Prizehead to Boston.

WARNING: The photo below may be offensive to some gardeners. Don't scroll down if you are bothered by the sight of slugs.

baby red romaine lettuce

Its definitely lettuce weather! I'm enjoying watching the plants grow. They love the cool spring rains.

I have about 10 lettuce varieties. This is red romaine. One of the types in my Valentine mix of red lettuces. Other varieties I have growing are Prizehead (my favorite), red oak leaf (another favorite), broad leaf escarole, Bibb, Boston, Merveille, and a couple other frilly red leaved types.

lettuce (Lactuca sativa)

red summer crisp

This is the lettuce I have been growing this summer. Red Summer Crisp from Johnny's. It has grown slow in the heat, but has not bolted. A beautiful shade of dark red in full sun, light/brighter red underneath my tomato plants.

three types of lettuce

I am picking 3 types of lettuce now. Prizehead is the red curly leaf growing at my community plot (center). Four Seasons is a green curly leaf growing in my home garden (right). Escarole Blonde is a plain green leaf also in my home garden (left). I also have some nice arugula I add to the lettuce bowl.

I harvest my lettuce by pulling out the entire head. I choose heads that are crowding other heads. I break off the dirty roots and leave these in the compost. I prefer to harvest entire heads because they look nice and so I can eat the tender inner leaves too. This also allows the heads that are left to grow fuller. My mom always harvests lettuce by picking to outer leaves. This works too and allows the plant to keep growing.

Lactuca sativa

lettuce

Lots of lettuce! I started harvesting it last week and have been able to keep the salad bowl full so far without buying supermarket lettuce. I'll see how long I can keep this up.

I am finding that there are differences between the lettuce grown at home and the lettuce grown at the community plot. The lettuce in my home garden is a little bit more bitter and more limp. The community garden lettuce is a bit sweeter and crisper. My community plot gets much more sun.

I am continuing to plant more lettuce every few weeks. This week I seeded two small trays of Red Summer Crisp. This is a Batavian type lettuce that does well in the summer heat.

Lactuca sativa

my first lettuce harvest

I harvested three heads of lettuce yesterday. They made a delicious salad. I will try now to see if I can keep our salad bowl full until October without buying lettuce. I have to keep seeding....

Lactuca sativa (click here to see more lettuce photos)
harvests from my vegetable gardens

lettuce rows

Lactuca sativa

early lettuce

I have two varieties of lettuce outside in my home garden. The red one is Marvel of the Four Seasons (Merville de Four Seasons), the green one is escarole Bionda A Cuore Pieno. I sowed the seeds for these indoors back in early March and transplanted them outside on April 11.

This year, I seeded my lettuce pretty dense in little flats, then transplanted them. (A flat that needs to be transplanted ASAP is on the lower right.) This way I'll get heads of lettuce, I hope. Last year I sowed the seeds directly in garden and found it difficult to thin enough to get heads. Nevertheless, the crowed plants made lots of delicious leaves.

Lactuca sativa

lettuce seeds

This year I have a ton of left over lettuce seeds. I only ordered a few new ones. Since I have such a nice collection, I did some research on lettuce types and characteristics.

There are five distinct types of lettuce: leaf, Cos/romaine, crisphead (Iceberg types), butterhead, and Batavian/summercrisp.

Lettuce is a fairly hardy, cool-weather vegetable that thrives between 60 and 70°F. At high temperatures, growth is stunted, leaves are bitter, and the plant bolts. Some types and varieties of lettuce withstand heat better than others. The crispheads are slowest to bolt, then summercrisps, butterheads, leaf lettuces and finally cos types.

These are the varieties of lettuce I have in my collection, ordered by type:
Leaf types:
Green Royal Oak: Early variety, tender and long standing. The leaves are heat resistant and dark green. Not bitter. 40 days
Black Seeded Simpson: A large upright, compact leaf-type lettuce with light green, wide, curled leaves. It is a very early, dependable and productive variety that is very heat tolerant and slow to bolt. Introduced in the 1870's by Peter Henderson & Co. Sweet and tender leaves, light yellow-green, very popular. 45-60 days
Prizehead: Despite the name, it is a non-heading, leaf lettuce. Leaves are upright, deeply curled, broad and light green. Prizehead was named after the island off of South Carolina and released in 1952 by Clemson Agricultural Experimental Station and the USDA. 55 days

Cos or Romaine types:
Red Romaine (my hand collected seeds): Delicious, flavorful lettuce brings color and zest to salads. The red coloring develops best in cool weather.

Summer crisp or Batavia types:
Cherokee: F1 hybrid. Thick, crisp, dark red leaves with good flavor. Very slow bolting with excellent tolerance to heat and bottom rot. 48 days

Butterhead types:
Merville de Four Seasons (Marvel of the Four Seasons) or its true (french) name, Merveille des Quatres Saisons. Also (Italien) Quattro Stagioni. This lettuce seems to go by many names. I have two packs, each with different variations of the name. Merveille is an old French heirloom lettuce originally introduced commercially in 1885. It produces 8 to 12 inch heads. The leaves are a creamy yellow to light green color and are tipped with a beautiful reddish-bronze color on the outer leaves. For beauty, Marvel of the Four Seasons is one of the most striking and gorgeous lettuces available. Features an excellent flavor and does well in all types of climates. Can be sown spring and fall and is resistant to cold. 40 to 55 days
Burpee Bibb: Bibb owes its name to John Bibb who developed this variety in Kentucky from Boston lettuce in the 1850s. The Burpee catalog says this Burpee bred variety is the sweetest Bibb lettuce ever. Heads have tender, dark green outer leaves that are tinged with brown and creamy yellow inside. 75 days
Big Boston: You can tell Bibb lettuce from Boston lettuce because Boston's leaves are wider and lighter green than Bibb. Big Boston has light green and brown-tinged leaves. This variety was apparently first offered in the US by Peter Henderson & Co. in 1890. Originally from France, it was renamed Big Boston by Henderson. 70 days

Miscellaneous Greens:
Fall greens mix (Sandhill Preservation Center): A mix of greens including lettuce, chards, greens, Chinese cabbage, spinach, and endive that is designed to be planted in the late Summer (early to late August here in Iowa) to be harvested from mid-September until the ground freezes.
Arugula (Eruca sativa)
Endive (Cichorium endivia), Blonde Full Heart: A popular escarole type and one of the few well known to American gardens. Elongated, non-heading broad leaves with a yellow heart have good flavor and color. This is a endive is adapted to a wide range of climates. 65 days

I plan to experiment with winter planting of lettuce ASAP in plastic bottles. My first garden planting will be March 20, I hope. Lettuce and peas will be my first vegetables planted in the spring garden.

Lactuca sativa