When do you start lettuce?

This is going to be my first year growing lettuce, and I need some help figuring out when to start. I know that this is a cool weather vegetable, but I'm not sure if that means that I should start them inside now or direct sow them in the garden. I've never direct sowed anything, but I've been starting my annuals from seed for the last few years inside. I have a mesclun mix that I am going to be using.

penne - you can sow your lettuce any time now. I have known folks who would actually sow the seeds on top of the snow and let the melting "plant" them, truly winter sown.

I scratched in a few leaf lettuce seeds yesterday.....gave them a tent for openers. In a good year they will take right off and be the first eating lettuce on the block. Stuck a handfull of onions too.

Thank you for your responses. I am going to try to start some this weekend. If it weren't for you guys, I would probably wait an additional few weeks.

Plant a little every week to create a progressive growth. If you lose a planting no big deal. For the wife and I about a foot and a half row is a fine one week planting of leaf lettuce. As to the onions I use the smallest bulbs I can find. They are normally the German bulbs in our area. I love young spring onions and will plant two or three rows right behind the short lettuce rows. A bit later I stick them in the flower pots too. They all get eaten as the flowers begin to fill their spaces.

I am up in years pretty good............I do not maintain a regular garden. My tinkering is small and limited to what I can put in pots or along the edge of our patio. My hands just do not fit the hoe handle very well any more. LOL

Doc, Your staggered planting idea is such a good suggestion. Last year, I did that with the tomatoes, and was so much happier with the results.

On the subject of tomatoes..............One would be well advised to grow only the fastest plants that they can plant to get some fruit before the fungi gets the plant. Fungi will wipe out most tomato plants this year as they did last year.

The only way to beat this fungi is to use Mycorrhizae and the best organic materials and principles you can put together creating healthy soil and healthy plant. The truth is you can not beat this fungi. You are trying to get some fruit before the fungi takes control and ends your season.

The fastest tomatoes I know are Early Girl and Sweet One Hundred Cherry Tomatoes. Patio gave me about half a crop last year. These three will be my planting with non-others even considered until this fungi runs its course.

The nice thing about this is that some Biologists are indicating that this fungi will cycle itself by peaking this year or next and slowly will become a no issue subject in as few as five more years of damage that should be less each year. Some are concerned that excessive use of fungicides will create a monster fungi yet to be known. That of course has been the trouble with the poison fungicides since the very beginning of their use.

Doc, I don't want to digress too much on Pennefeather's lettuce thread, but I must have gotten really lucky last year. Only 1 of my 24 tomatoe plants suffered an early death. It may not have been so prevelant down here, or the mycorrhizae and other organic amendments that I used in the plantings may have really helped. Thanks for the warning, I will be sure to keep up those practises.

Doc - are you talking about the dreadful "late blight" that got introduced last spring through some of the box stores' stock? If so, immediate removal of the infected tomato and/or potato plants roots and all followed by thorough clean-up of any shed plant material will prevent carry-over to the next season. The organism requires specific host tissue to overwinter, and careful choice of this year's plants can prevent re-introduction.

That is interesting thought...........however those fungi have been around for more than a few years. Perhaps some have survived since the days of the great potato famine. They are specific only to any potato plants or related plant like tomato. I gave the latest thinking of the Biological community. These fungi are now and have been in the air, in the soil and on plants that were used as seedlings. They are now in the suburban gardens arriving there even transported in manures from farms that were affected the years before. It has been reported that the big box stores all bought the infected seedlings but this should not be considered the source or cause. How did the seed and seedling get infected? It may have broadened the infected areas to include many growing areas that were in locations where the fungi were not well established.

A single individual can do little to eliminate or even reduce the damage when huge areas are seeing losses from this fungi.

We can be sure there will be many words written on this difficulty over the next few years. Those magazines have to have their pages filled. It will be interesting.

Yes, the microbes have been around at least since the series of potato famines in the early 1800's. However, smallpox for example has been around for perhaps thousands of years. Control of it by eleminating sutible hosts through vaccination has nearly eliminated it from the planet. Like many horticultural maladies, late blight has been kept in check by phytosanitary pratices. It is not everywhere in the environment. It has to have specific host tissues to survive, namely tomato and potato. Other related genera such as eggplant have not been shown as vectors. Composted manures do not transmit the microbe. Again, the organism only maintains viability through being in host plant tissue. It is not everywhere in the environment, and beliveing it is gives us an excuse to be less vigilant and facilitate its spread. Just like it takes a carrier to spread the H1N1 flu, some supplier of seed or other plant material resulted in the contamination of the box stores stock.

This message was edited Mar 13, 2010 7:34 PM

Lots of magazines will need lots of print with good photograpyt to goes with. Start free lancing now to make a bundle later this year. There's little money here so shoot for the national magazines and millions of readers. If you have the right knowledge and attract a significant following your work could make a worthy change in specific garden practices. The real pay back will get more gratifying as you grow in the field.

I'll be putting out some lettuce seed this week along with my peas.

Once it stops raining, I will start amending soil and sowing lettuce seeds.

I totally missed out on the tomato excitement last year because I started tomatoes from seed for the first time. This year, I decided to go with Krim, a black tomato, and a cherry tomato

Tomorrow I will treat all my potting soil and the small bit of open garden soil to a large application of aerobic manure and worm cast based tea. I will do this again on April 15th and again on May the first. I will continue weekly as the few plants I have grow.
All plantings will be mulched including the potted plants to prevent up splash while providing more even temperature and moisture. Mycorrhizae (endo type) will be supporting all plantings. The natural biology of the soil will be maximized as will the occupational theory on all plant parts above the ground. The practical occupation of living biology on the plants will prevent the bad pathogens from getting a foothold. It is the only method of control that grows with the emergence of new plant parts.

I will use my normal amounts of fertilizer and other amendments to support the biology applied. I will have maximum biological expansion in seventy six degree liquid by 8AM tomorrow AM. The brew was started at 6PM this evening. The light foam you see is the beginning of the bloom we can see as the critters expand into horrific numbers. In lay language that foam is critter barf. The liquor has an earthy smell. At perfect peak the maximum expansion will show the largest head of foam. When it begins to recede is the time to make the application. Some might say an application made this early will be slow to begin working. They would be correct but if ever we needed strong soil this is one of the years because of the fungi attacks last summer. Cost of production exclusive of my free labor and a bit of electric is about fifteen cents a gallon. It's OK to waste. If the critters freeze out they become part of the stronger soil by yielding their bodies some fifty million of them in a single grain of soil.