Lettuce Cut and Come Again Seeds
When I had a marketplace garden, I grew 200-human foot rows of lettuce. The rows independent my own mixture of lettuce varieties, chosen for taste, colour, and leaf shape, and I cutting the leaves young for the mesclun mix I sold to local chefs. Twice a calendar week my ii young assistants and I knelt in the white clover pathways to shear the baby plants.
Most of the dozen or so lettuce varieties were the type described as cut lettuces, which obligingly and vigorously sprout a fresh crop of leaves when they are snipped off but a couple of inches above the ground. They are often called cut-and-come-again lettuces.
Cutting lettuces are more often than not not-heading foliage varieties from two groups, Thou Rapids and oakleaf. The Grand Rapids grouping produces broad, crinkled, and frilly leaves, while the oakleaf varieties have a flatter and distinctively lobed leaves. Both groups include crimson and dark-green varieties and several cherry-red-dark-green combinations. All make corking garden design elements.
Paint the garden with lettuce
Whatever else I abound, I e'er have enough of 'Black Seeded Simpson', an heirloom. I don't carp with little packets; I buy information technology by the ounce, nigh 25,000 seeds. Properly stored, lettuce seed stays viable for three years. 'Black Seeded Simpson' is so reliable I use it as the standard for judging the germination success of other varieties. A fast grower, it produces crinkly, juicy, yellowish-greenish leaves. Its just shortcoming is a tendency to bolt in summer heat; information technology does best in spring and fall here on Long Island.
One of the best summertime performers I accept found is romaine: a French cos, 'Craquerelle du Midi'. When every other lettuce in my garden is getting bitter or defiantly announcing its plans to set seed, this one stays mild and leafy.
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The red or green lobed leaves of the oakleaf types are pillars of the looseleaf institution. There are at least half-a-dozen varieties of each colour commonly establish in seed catalogs. 'Oakleaf' is the original onetime standby that yields crisp, tender, light green leaves and keeps going through moderate heat. Although it has securely lobed leaves, 'Salad Bowl' is not a true oakleaf. Just information technology is an All-America Selections winner that produces rosettes of fragile lime-green leaves and besides has good heat tolerance.
Tops for reliability, even through a hot summer, is 'Crimson Sails'. Another All-America Selections winner, it'southward a fast grower with dark-green and ruby-red-bronze leaves.
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A 1998 introduction that did well for me was 'Green Vision', which produces green, sleeky, savoyed leaves; it is a slow bolter. 'Lollo Rossa' has lite-dark-green leaves with elegant rosy margins, while its cousin, 'Lollo Biondo', is pure pale-green. Both 'Lollo' cultivars are deeply curled and rut tolerant, and very decorative both in the garden and in salads.
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Stepping beyond the looseleaf varieties, there are some butterheads and romaine I similar to grow as cutting lettuces. They will also sprout new leaves, if less energetically than the looseleaf varieties.
Of the butterheads, 'Ermosa' has night green leaves and stands upward to a fair corporeality of summertime heat. In a weak pre-spring moment, I ordered seed for romaine called 'Freckles' or 'Trout Back', simply considering I liked its proper noun. I wish all my weak moments worked out this well. It is beautiful lettuce, lime-green flecked with wine-red markings and has a fresh, delicate taste.
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Better ways to sow pocket-sized seeds
Because they are harvested while very young, cutting lettuces tin can be planted in adequately dense bands. Instead of broadcasting seed, it is only equally piece of cake to sow rows virtually three inches apart, with 1⁄2 inch to 1 inch between plants in the row. I have found that it takes less time to found seed advisedly than to thin seedlings; besides, if not done properly, thinning often disturbs the roots of the seedlings that are left.
There are several ways to sow seed to eliminate thinning. The simplest is to mix the seed with dry builder'southward sand (non salty beach sand), using about twice every bit much sand as seed. This makes information technology easier to dribble seeds at adequately even spacing down a marked row. An inexpensive little gadget that distributes seed much better than a seed packet is the Seed Sower, which has five different-size outlets to control the flow of seeds down a tapered spout.
For garden rows, my old reliable is an Earthway Seeder, for which I now have a dozen seed plates for dissimilar seed types and spacings. It makes a furrow, plants the seed at whatever depth I desire, covers information technology, and firms the basis, all in one pass.
Last flavour I experimented with the Pinpoint Precision Seeder, which can handle vi seed sizes. It'due south smaller and more maneuverable than the Earthway, and works well with a finely tilled, debris-free bed, simply is a chip finicky in less-than-perfect weather. A larger version sows 4 rows 2-1⁄4 inches apart, perfect for mesclun.
If plenty space is available, or just to confuse pests, I sometimes skip the cutting-and-come-again routine in favor of harvest, hoe, rake, and reseed. I harvest the young plants, roots and all, stir the soil upwards with a stirrup hoe, rake the bed flat, and sow fresh seed.
Continue the soil rich
Lettuce likes a fairly rich, sandy loam. I till the beds and let them settle for a week before applying virtually an inch of well-rotted manure or compost, which I work into the near-surface zone with the stirrup hoe. After harvesting leaves, I revive the plants with a weakfish or seaweed emulsion, or manure tea. I have a siphon gadget on my drip irrigation arrangement that allows me to feed emulsion or filtered manure tea down the lines. Most drip systems can be fitted with something similar.
Lettuce will grow, if not thrive, in less than ideal soil, just one thing it must have is water, near an inch per week. Baste irrigation puts water only where a found needs information technology. Overhead watering wastes a lot of h2o, and at the incorrect fourth dimension, such every bit belatedly in the twenty-four hours or in hot, muggy conditions, encourages fungal diseases.
Slugs beloved lettuce as much as I do, merely luckily they seem to prefer beer. A few saucers of stale beer aid them drown their sorrows and themselves. I tried sugar water one time, which worked, but my bees liked it even more than the slugs did.
Cutworms can be a hassle, only unremarkably, they won't practice also much damage to a adequately dense band of plants. Untilled soil tin harbor cutworms, so I till my beds in jump while the weather is nonetheless cold enough to kill overwintered cutworm pupae and eggs. If cutworms go a real problem, I add parasitic nematodes to the soil about a week before planting.
How to grow lettuce
In the home garden, sowing every week will ensure a constant and generous supply of lettuce. Each sowing yields three or four cuttings before the plants are exhausted. As a rough guide to quantity, sowing about 3 feet of row every week will keep one omnivorous adult well supplied with salad from spring to autumn; a vegetarian might eat twice as much.
Lettuces prefer cool temperatures, merely by sowing every week, choosing heat-tolerant varieties, and using shade-cloth tunnels, I can produce lettuce right through my Zone 7 summers. It is like shooting fish in a barrel to keep the supply going right into winter past growing winter varieties in cold frames or tunnels of row-cover fabric. The same tunnels can be used, covered instead with fifty pct shade material, to protect oestrus-sensitive lettuce from the summertime sun.
And but considering information technology's hot doesn't mean I cease sowing lettuce. When temperatures hit the 80s, lettuce seeds will not germinate, so I start seeds in flats in a cool room indoors and set the plants in the garden when they have 2 sets of true leaves.
From early on spring until the outset of winter, I cut lettuces and keep several salad bowls generously supplied. But lettuce is good for more than just salads. Endeavor it in a creamy soup or wrapped effectually vinegared sushi rice for a tempting appetizer.
Sources
Burpee
300 Park Ave.
Warminster, PA 18991
800-888-1447
www.burpee.com
The Melt's Garden
PO Box 535
Londonderry, VT 05148
800-457-9703
Hermosa Valley Garden Seeds
PO Box 1409
Santa Maria, CA 93456
877-834-7333
Johnny'southward Selected Seeds
955 Benton Avenue
Winslow, ME 04901
877-564-6697
www.johnnysseeds.com
gaskinauncesubled.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.finegardening.com/project-guides/fruits-and-vegetables/cut-and-come-again-lettuce-sampler
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