01.21.09
sprouts
My lettuce has sprouted. Every morning I take the two trays outside to sit on the deck in the sunshine. So far nothing has bothered them and the sunshine does them good.
Leaf lettuce is especially easy to grow. My favorite is Red Sails. It has a beautiful red and green tint to the lettuce leaves. If it is grown outside in direct sunshine the red color intensifies.
The other good thing about Red Sails is you get a huge head of leaf lettuce that doesn’t bolt easy ( a good thing since the temperature can get up to 90+ here) and the flavor is not bitter. I like my lettuce to not overpower the dressing!
After the lettuce starts get big enough I’ll transplant them into the grow tubes that hang inside the greenhouse.
My greenhouse is suffering from the winter blues. If you look down the tunnel on the left hand side you can see the hanging PVC tubes I will plant with lettuce starts. This method works great as long as the greenhouse doesn’t get too hot.
Last year I grew all my basil in these tubes and the basil did great.
Planted bottom to top on the right are:
Overwinter carrots, potatoes. leeks and romaine lettuce, cabbage. On the left will be the strawberry beds and the ‘fenced’ in area is the nursery for new plant transplants. Unfortunately the chickens got in here and dug up all the baby plants I’ve been caring for. They were starts from our previous house. I learned my lesson and I now have a shade cloth screen on the door. But the chickens were doing what chickens do, scratching and eating bugs. I cannot fault them but I sure was miffed at the destruction.
Mike said,
January 21, 2009 at 3:56 pm
The weather here is in the warm 60’s. I am itching to get something planted. But I know there is still a lot of snow on the way. Wish I had a greenhouse like that.