Lettuce begin – the 2011 growing season is underway!

Posted by louisa on Friday 21 January 2011 in growing | 10 comments

Check these out:

My first baby seedling shoots of 2011!

They’re Winter Gem lettuces – planted a little late in their growing window but they wouldn’t have germinated in the super cold of December.

We grew them last year too – planted about now – and they formed tasty greener-than-the-picture heads by early April – just when we wanted to start eating lots of salad but before our spring salad leaves were ready.

(I’d intended to start a batch on 1st Oct, 1st Nov, 1st Dec & 1st Jan to see where the sweet spot was for planting them and how early we could enjoy the heads – but didn’t get around to it. Maybe next year.)

I think these little tiny shoots delight me because they represent the start of the 2011 growing season – before we know it, we’ll be up to our ears in courgettes, tomatoes and all sorts of salad & greens.

After a chilly few days this week (the ground’s been frozen since about Tuesday), it’s supposed to be warming up a little over the weekend – which means, hopefully, I’ll be able to get into the garden. I’ve got a few baby fruit bushes to plant on and a couple of inherited, overgrown shrubs to pull up to replace with fruit trees/bushes.

I’m also going to try to get ahead of myself and fill lots of pots with my starting soil mix so they’re ready for seeds when the time comes. My “to plant in Feb” and “to plant in March” seed packet piles are rather extensive so any help I can give my future self will be gratefully received!

Have you started growing anything in 2011 yet? When does your growing season start?

And since at least a few of you are on t’other side of the globe so are in the opposite situation, have you been planting anything for overwintering?

Growing salad leaves – frugal, organic & green

Posted by louisa on Friday 25 June 2010 in eating, growing | 0 comments

I just sowed my fourth pot of loose salad leaves of the season.

We finished the last of the just-about-to-bolt Winter Gems lettuce this week and have got a tray of Lollo Rosso seedlings in our porch/greenhouse but loose leaves has been filling the gap between those beautifully – and in three or four weeks, this new pot will be offering up its tasty leaves too.

Until we started growing our own, my partner John and I weren’t big salad eater, but mostly from disorganisation than anything. We didn’t have meal plans and we’d regularly find lettuce going soggy/brown in our fridge – we’d buy it for one meal, then eat some more at a second but then we’d have meals that didn’t work with salad or eat out, and soon the lettuce would be past it. We realised that didn’t make sense from a frugal or food waste point of view so tended to not have it at all at home, to save the waste.

Now though, from early spring to about the first frosts, we can eat fresh salad leaves whenever we want them – and without waste. A little gem lettuce is just the right size for a meal for us, or for a sandwich, we can just pick a handful of loose/”pick and come again” leaves.