Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Almost Time to Start Thinning Out Lettuce

It is almost time to begin thinning out my lettuce sprouts that have began growing sometime earlier this week to late last week.  There have only been a couple of containers that needed thinning and I made sure I did that today before they got too crowded.

I always leave just one plant per pot in order to have one good producing plant rather than many small non-producing lettuce plants.  Today I did about four pots that were ready for thinning.  I will have to do much more in the future once all my lettuce seeds have completed sprouting.














Here is just one example of iceberg seeds I have planted and sprouted rather quickly.  I then took the time today to remove all of them but one.  The one I pick is usually the strongest out of the bunch.
Thursday, February 9, 2017

What Plants to Start Indoors Before Spring Weather?

It is about time to start planting some seeds indoors for a little bit of a head start to the season.  I always plant at least one cool weather plant indoors so that they will be ready by the spring.  This will normally be plants that can withstand the cooler weather and that will actually thrive in low temperatures.

This year I decided on planting lettuce seeds.  Most of the time I pick spinach because they love the cold weather, but I wanted to plant something different indoors at this time.  I always grow lettuce indoors, but I never start them this early.  I usually wait until march to plant them, but this year I am planting them before the Spring.

Like usual I have placed them under fluorescent lights because they would take much longer if left on a windowsill at this time.  On a side note I wanted to mention that I am still going to plant lettuce, but they are going into the garden as seeds instead of pots indoors.


I also wanted to plant various types of lettuce seeds instead of just one kind.  Since there are four different types I wanted to grow at least one type of each.  Iceberg (also called crisphead), romaine, butterhead, and looseleaf are the four types that I have to choose from.  I have one of each and used six pots for each type so I should get at least six plants of the four mentioned.