Growing Lettuce from Seed

When I first thought of growing lettuce, I was discouraged because it looked complicated. Turns out that it is very easy to grow and hardy too. It did very well in the cooler temperatures. In June of 2023, we had some very weird weather here and it was my first experience around spring thunderstorms and trying to keep my garden from being destroyed.

I decided to make a cover for my lettuces out of some cloth to keep the hail from causing any major damage. 

The first storm, most of the leaves were shredded and I decided to harvest what was there so that hopefully the plant could put its energy back into growing again.

With all the amount of work that I put into seed starting and planning the garden, it broke my heart when I saw most of my initial plants suffer from hail damage. All I could do from here on was to cover some of my crops with whatever cloth I had and make to remove it on the sunny days. Thankfully most everything recovered and did very well. For many of the other plants that suffered from damage I popped a ton of seeds in the ground to make up for what was lost. 

Here is my first harvest, which was just enough to have a nice large salad for dinner. My favorite lettuce turned out to be the Green Salad Bowl. 

I bought several packets of lettuce seeds to try all pictured at the bottom of this post. All of them from Botanical Interests. The Salad Bowl Blend had a mix of both green and red salad bowl. All of the seeds that I bought were frost tolerant which I think might be very common with lettuce but I am not sure. From what I have read mostly is that they do grow better in the cooler temperatures and that was true for mine as well. 

As soon as the temperatures warmed up, my lettuce began to bolt and I didn’t have any additional seedlings to fill the place, so sadly I had to eventually pulled them out of the ground. Next time I will make sure to sow in 3 week successions for a constant harvest. On the days that I had an over abundance, I gave to neighbors and my friends. 

I started my seeds indoors about 6 weeks before the last frost and planted them out on May 12.

If you are thinking about growing lettuce and have never tried it, I highly recommend it. Not only is it rewarding to be able to eat fresh salad from the garden, but it also provides some beautiful color and interest to the garden. The other lettuce varieties that I chose from botanical interests were the Farmers Market Blend, New Red Fire, Marvel of Four Seasons, and Paris Island Cos Romaine lettuce.

 
The picture posted below was taken on June 29 and you can see just how much the lettuce filled in the space in just one month from planting. 

Meet Luna

We have a new addition to our family and garden. It’s a real blessing that she came into our lives when she did. She is a three year old Alaskan  Malamute that was rescued 2 weeks ago. She is extremely well behaved and gentle. The first week, she dug up one of the garden beds and chewed on one of the drip lines, but Im hoping that once she has a play area of her own with a place to dig that she will calm down. She has been going through some training and been watching her closely when she is outside. After I was finished with work today, I came by the garden and I put up some stakes with some string to block off some of the areas that I don’t want her to step on. So far it has worked out well. 

I also put up some short metal fencing around the spring bulbs as a deterrent to keep her little paws from venturing beyond and stepping on the flowers that are popping up. I cannot wait for the summer to share the garden with her. She has already made us feel so much calmer and happy having her around. 

Carrot Patch

Last summer was my first time growing carrots so I wanted to share a little bit of what I learned about them. I had a lot of questions about them but found there was so much information online that it helped me to be confident in trying them. I learned how to thin them out but this was a vegetable that took a lot of patience because I didn’t see any huge growth right away. The first step was waiting for them germinate after several weeks and then waiting for them to get to at least 3 to 4 inches tall before the thinning could even take place. At first I didn’t think that what I was doing was going to work but with patience they began to get bigger and was rewarded with many healthy looking carrots by the end of August. The location that I chose to grow my carrots was in a 4x4 raised bed which shared a space with beets and also sugar snap peas and some valentine sunflowers. I grew a variety of carrots, which included Danver and also a rainbow blend.  I really loved the dark red and purple variety, so for this spring 2024 garden, I purchased some cosmic purple to try and also more Danver variety because they did so well.

This is the raised garden bed that I chose to grow them in.

 

 

This is after our harvest.

Growing Beans

Deciding on the right type of bean to grow is fairly easy once you know how much space you have to work with. I researched the two different types of beans and decided that the pole bean was the right decision for me. I had so many other low growing veggie plants that I didn’t have room for the bush bean variety, and it was more about being creative and getting the most use out of the space I had to work with. 

I have always loved the idea of vertical gardening so it was an easy decision. I built a small arbor using some old fencing that the previous owners left here and made the arbor connect between two 4x4 garden boxes. At first I wasn’t sure how it was going to come together but I love how it turned out in the end. 

In the beginning I started indoors with some seeds in pots and the first ones that I planted out were eaten up by some kind of pest, so I decided to try again and popped a ton of seeds in the ground at the base of the fencing to make up for what I had lost.  They were very slow to germinate as the shade from the arch was an issue at first but with time they took off and eventually filled in very nicely. 

I grew cantaloupe on the opposite side of the arch which did very well. Both were planted in separate boxes, so they did not share the same soil. Typically if you grow them in the same soil they will help each other.  Since beans add nitrogen to the soil and the cantaloupes thrive on nitrogen rich soil, they make good companion plants, but I did not plan it this way. They were grown in completely separate boxes but sharing the same trellis.

It was fun picking beans overhead and I loved how it created so much privacy from the front of the yard. I also added some small solar fairy lights which added a lot of charm to the garden in the evenings. I will definitely be growing beans again in the same box, but the cantaloupe will have a different home this summer in a location that gets more sun and heat. The beans attracted so many pollinators. There were a lot of hummingbirds, hawk moths and wasps. I was stung one day by a wasp when I was picking beans and that was not a fun experience. Got me right through my gardening gloves and was very painful!

The hummingbirds were very active and fun to watch as they zipped back and forth between the beans to the flowers. They also were fun to observe when they used the arch as a shelter and sat on the vines resting when they needed to. I really enjoy the wildlife that the garden brings and how we can get up close to learn more about these beautiful creatures.

  

The video below shows a hummingbird resting on one of the vines under the arch and he is grooming his feathers.

The beans that I grew in the photos above are Blue Lake Pole Beans from Botanical Interests