Planting Lettuce

Mark's Veg Plot is back on home territory today, after the little jaunt in Kent...


My Lettuce plants have been growing ever so slowly in the cold conditions, but I finally judged that some of them were big enough to leave their pots and be planted out in the "Salads Bed".

Planting is a fairly quick job - water the plant in its pot so that it comes out easily; dig a hole; tip plant out of pot into hole; backfill with soil; water in well to settle; finish!

Actually, there were two more stages - sprinkle around a few slug pellets, and then cover each plant with a cloche. With weather conditions as they are at present (rain, sleet, hail, wind, low temperatures), the Lettuces will really welcome the protection afforded by those cloches. Fortunately I have quite a lot of those things, in various sizes. They are inexpensive and very good value for money.


My Salads Bed is beginning to fill up quite nicely now. You can see some other Lettuces in the foreground. There are two which are from last year (!) and four of the little Tom Thumb ones that I planted out a couple of weeks ago.

"Tom Thumb", a small Butterhead variety

 The patch of "Daddy Salad" aka Baby Leaf Salad is showing a fair bit of green and purple now:

When you look closely, you see that it is only the Brassicas (identifiable by their distinctive double-kidney shaped cotyledons) that have germinated so far. No sign of any Lettuces yet.

Under the tunnel cloche seen at the right of this next photo are three rows of Radishes, and in the open space behind are three rows of Spring Onions (yet to germinate). The patch with the Spring Onion seeds in it was unprotected at the time I took this photo simply because I wanted to water it. After that it was covered again with another tunnel cloche.

In pots in the garage I have some Land Cress (aka American Cress) and some Lamb's Lettuce (aka Corn Salad), but neither of them is showing any sign of germination. I think it's just too cold in there. When space allows I will bring them indoors for a while to kick-start them.


Meanwhile, the rest of the Lettuces - the ones that won't get planted - will provide a couple of servings of Baby Leaf Salad very soon. It would be a shame to waste them!