In the Dark, Dark, Days of Winter....Lettuce!

I know it is gray and cold and very February, but I’ve been growing some beautiful lettuce and I can’t thank the man who made it happen because I don’t know his name. So this is a shout out to the anonymous cute young guy at Brogue Hydroponics who had the brilliant idea. Plus, a thank you to the guy I usually take for granted who made it possible.

Earlier this year I announced my plans to figure out hydroponic gardening. It seemed like the last frontier and a way to grow gorgeous lettuce in the winter. Alas, there is nothing growing hydroponically in my home. It just kept getting shoved to the bottom of the to-do list for too long and now it will be next winter’s best intention.

But hydroponics do figure in to my winter lettuce growing operation. Last summer and fall as I was gathering information about hydroponic gardening, I began to badger the people who work at the Brogue Hydroponics stand at the market. One young guy was particularly helpful and I explained to him my desire to get in on the hydroponic gig and asked if it would be possible to tour their farm. He looked around and quietly said, “No, they don’t really like anybody visiting the farm.” Hmmm. I don't know many secretive farmers. This peaked my interest.

I continued to interrogate the nice young man every week. He told me that sometimes they join the summer farm tour. That was way too long to wait. Finally, exasperated by my questions, he said, “You can just re-grow the stuff you buy, you know that right?” He explained that if I tore off the lettuce head from my newly purchased lettuce. I could replant the bottom of the head, the part that is still in soil when purchased. I asked if I needed to plant it in water or if I could just put it in dirt and he shrugged his shoulders. “Would probably work in either.” I went home happy with my new information.

The previous weekend, my husband had finally built me a cold frame (don’t be that impressed, I’ve been asking him to do this for nearly ten years.). He strategically placed it on our southeast facing slope just below the blueberries. I think this is strategic, not just from a sunshine angle, but also to discourage me from adding another row of blueberries (as I did last year).

Baby lettuce about three weeks old. Yes, I  realize
someone needs to weed this.

The days were growing colder my this time, so I opened up my cold frame where baby lettuce leaves were just beginning to sprout and planted the bottom of a head of hydroponic lettuce. Then I promptly forgot about it. It’s easy to forget about cold frames when they are closed because they rarely need watering encased as they are in their own ecosystem.

Don't be distracted by the handsome cat, just look
at that lettuce!

On a sunny day near Christmas, I popped open the cold frame to check how the baby lettuce was growing and I was greeted by a huge head of butter lettuce that looked exactly like the one I’d purchased back in early November. It was, quite possibly, the most delicious lettuce I’ve ever tasted. The baby lettuce surrounding it was only about a half-inch bigger than the last time I’d looked. I’m not expecting it to grow bigger than my thumb until March or April at this rate.

Wowee - wow, wow, wow!

Of course, since then I’ve planted more hydroponic lettuce. It’s all I can do to keep from opening the lid on a daily basis to see how it’s doing. The temperatures are hovering around freezing or below this week, so I’ve resolved not to open the box for fear the cold air will be too much for the baby lettuce.

Cold frames are very simple to build. I asked my husband what was necessary and here’s the response I got. I need to warn you that he’s an engineer, so there may be more information here than you necessarily need and it may sound more complicated than it actually is. Fear not - you can do this. It's basically a classic sandbox with a lid.

Supplies

2 ea 8ft 2x12 (pressure treated) for the base

3 ea 8ft 2x4 (pressure treated) for the top

1 ea 26inx8ft clear polycarbonate corrugated roof segment.  Also the 24in plastic “closure strips” to nail down corrugated (sold in same aisle of store)

Hinges

Scraps for internal corner bracing, etc.

2 ea 8ft  5/4x6in Cedar deck boards (to line the box at/below soil line)

3 inch deck screws, 2-1/2in stainless screws, special fasteners for the corrugated roof material (also sold in that aisle)

Location: On a hillside facing  Southeast.  The hill is important because this box has no slope to the roof.  In order to put on flat ground it would need a roof that has a pitch to allow rain to slide off.

Base: The finished dimensions are 4 ft x 4 ft.  The base is made from the two 2x12’s, each cut to 4ft and then  screwed together with deck screws at the ends.  I squared it up then secured with scraps (diagonals) to keep it square as it was moved around into place.  An approximately 4 inch deep trench was dug to get below the grass root level; lay in the base and double check square (diagonal measurements equal).   Use the cedar (cut to length) to line the box down to the bottom of the hole, and fasten in place with stainless screws (not required but I had some left over from a previous job).  This keeps most of the pressure treated wood out of contact with the soil while taking advantage of the long life of PT and Cedar in contact with the ground.  Using regular pine or fir would only last about 2 years in contact with the ground.  I was tempted to put in the dirt and fill the sides, but one never knows what will need to be changed, so fill in after all other steps are complete.

Roof (lid):

Made a 4ftx4ft square with the 2x4’s and then put in some corner bracing as well as additional studs to allow nailing of the corrugated (trying to use as little as possible to keep it light). Put on hinges and installed on the base to make sure everything is ok, square and matching up nice.  Then nailed on the closure strips and 4ft long pieces of the polycarbonate.  Note that the poly roof is a little larger than the box, but only 1/2in or so on a side.  It creates a little bit of an overhang as a drip-lip.  You don’t want too much or it will get caught on your pants or the lawn mower over time.  Now that the box is all finished, fill it in.

I screened the soil before putting it back in the box so it is nice top soil with no rocks, weeds, grubs, etc. I used all the rocks to fill in the outside edge as this may also be considered good drainage and we have so many rocks we need places to put them. The sod goes in the woods since I don’t want to encourage any grass growing around the outside edges.  Over time, the grass will grow to the outside edge then need to be weed-wacked.  Now would be a great time to mulch around the outside of the box.

I also put a long 2x2 board on a screw to allow the top to stay propped open (like on a grand piano).  As you lift the top, the long board extends and sits on the ground so the top stays open on warm days or to weed/plant/harvest.  Also I put a few scraps of wood nearby to prop open the top just enough to let air in, but keep the chickens out. (Otherwise the inside of the box would get too hot)

Every time I go to the market, I look for the young guy who told me about re-planting my hydroponic lettuce, but I haven’t seen him at the stand since the day he passed along that information. I don’t want to promote conspiracy theories or anything, but it’s suspicious that he’s been missing ever since revealing one of their secrets. Who knew hydroponics was such a furtive agricultural practice?

If you decide to build a cold frame it can increase your growing season on both ends. Herbs like parsley and rosemary will most likely keep growing year round in a cold frame. Build it soon and you’ll be able to plant lettuce this month and harvest in late March! Oh, the possibilities! I’m hoping to convince my engineer to design me some taller boxes for next fall to ensure peppers and peas through thanksgiving. If he’s lucky, I’ll forget all about my hydroponic dreams!

Get It Started!

I’m late getting my seeds started this year. The basic problem is I’m thinking too much. This is a common problem for me. Too much thinking/dwelling/considering and not enough doing.

Initially, I was so ready to get going with the garden that at the first sign of spring (75 degree weather in the middle of February!), I went out in search of soil. The problem is that my local gardening place wasn’t open yet for the season and the only thing Home Depot had was “Organic Choice” by Scott’s Miracle Gro. In my zest, I bought it, carted it home, and left it on my porch. Where it still sits because a) I became extremely skeptical that anything made by the Miracle Gro people could possibly be organic and b) even if it is, the Scott’s company is responsible for law suits against organic competitors, not to mention the poisoning of more lawns and gardens in America than anyone else.

Everyday as I walked past the big yellow bag, I felt guiltier and guiltier. This past week I realized that I’d spent so much time wallowing in my guilt and indecision that it’s less than 8 weeks away from Tomato planting time and I have yet to start a single seed. So I went to my computer and googled “Organic Choice by Scott’s” and low and behold it is actually certified by OMRI (Organic Material Research Institute). OMRI is the non-profit organization responsible for certifying gardening materials for certified organic growers. They keep a database on all the products they certify.

The skeptic in me wonders how a non-profit agency that is funded by donations, grants, and the fees it charges for the certification process could possibly keep tabs on the tens of thousands of products out there, but the trusting soul in me figures there’s really no other option but to go with it. Still. Scott’s is a pretty lousy company. If their product is so superior why is it they have to wage legal and financial war on small organic companies to eliminate the competition? I haven’t opened the bag.

My usual practice is to mix sphagnum peat moss and vermiculite with potting soil to start my seeds, but now that my potting soil is giving me such mental fits, I decided to try something different.

Seed starter is exactly what it says it is – a medium for starting seeds. Typically, it has very little nutrients in it because seeds don’t need nutrients to germinate. Once they have their first true leaves, however, they need some food. So that’s when it’s recommended that you transplant them to potting soil. I’m a lazy gardener in a hurry, so I combine the seed starter and the soil to begin with and skip the whole transplanting step, except for my tomatoes, the royalty of the garden. I do transplant my tomatoes to bigger pots somewhere along the line.

I searched OMRI for commercial seed starting mixtures that are certified, and found only one brand which isn’t available at my gardening store. I turned to OrganicGardening Magazine’s website (highly recommend this site to anyone with gardening questions or anyone just starting out gardening – super helpful articles). They recommended a home-made seed starter recipe of screened compost, vermiculite, perlite, and sphagnum peat moss. Their potting soil recipe was simply compost and vermiculite. I decided to split the difference and create something that has all four ingredients, but is heavy on the vermiculite and compost. We shall see.

In the interest of my own completely non-scientific research, I’m also going to mix vermiculite, compost and my own garden soil for some of the seeds.

It’s also time to start the peas. Because my hens are not completely finished tilling the garden for me, I decided to try germinating the peas myself in wet paper towels. This will give the girls a couple extra days, but keep my peas on schedule. I’ve never tried this, but have heard from old-timers that it works great.

Stay tuned for the Seedling Update and the Pea Report next month!

Have you started any plants yourself? The ground is warm enough for lettuce, spinach, and carrots, so scatter a few seeds. It’s also safe to put in your broccoli plants and cabbages. You don’t need a designated vegetable garden, just find an open piece of soil in one of your flower beds and have at it. No excuses for no garden. Plant something!

Ready, Set, Garden!

I started the garden this weekend. What a great feeling. I planted eight rows of lettuce (which is crazy I know so make plans to stop by for salad in June), a row of hot purple radishes, 2 rows of spinach, 2 rows of carrots, one super long row of sugar snap peas, and one row of swiss chard (which I’ve never planted before and hardly ever eaten, but the picture in the catalog was too much to resist and swiss chard is supposed to be good for you so I’m going to learn to eat it.). The onion and broccoli plants have a few more days to adapt to real sunlight before they will be installed, but they’re moving in this week.

I haven’t been able to clip the wings on one of our roosters and yesterday I caught him in the garden digging up and eating the seeds I’d just planted! Hugely righteous anger. The kids got water cannons for Easter from their grandparents so I appropriated one to keep on the porch so that I can shoot the rooster whenever he makes his way to the garden (which is twice so far this morning). I’m not sure you can train a chicken, but I’m certainly going to try. All the chickens have been sentenced to living in the chicken pen once again since the garden has begun. It’s a tough adjustment after 7 months of free range life. Some are able to fly over the fence (yes, chickens really can fly- but only about 5-6 feet up and they do much better if there is a hill to give them a running start and a gravitational advantage.) To remedy this problem, we clip their wings which doesn’t hurt and isn’t even visible (their “flying feathers” are hidden behind their “standing around looking like a chicken feathers”). Only problem is none of us can seem to catch the big rooster. It doesn’t help that his spurs are huge and he just looks mean. He’s never hurt anyone and he has the wimpiest crow around, but still. I’m going to try to do it tonight when he’s sleeping.

How do you know when to start your garden? The weather’s been beautiful and it’s very tempting to start tucking in all your seeds. For sure there is still cold weather to come so I wouldn’t chance a tomato or a pepper yet and the soils not warm enough for cucumbers or squash. Seeds need the soil to be about 55 degrees to germinate, some need it warmer. Lettuce and peas like it cold. Tradition says you should plant your peas on St Patrick’s Day, but we were still under snow cover on St. Patty’s day this year.

Another good way to know when you can start planting is the texture of your soil. You want your soil to be like chocolate cake not chocolate fudge. So that’s basically it – chocolate cake that is about 55 degrees and you’re good to go with lettuce, carrots, radish, peas (all kinds), spinach, broccoli, onions and any other seed whose packet lists “as soon as the soil can be worked” or “early spring” as the planting time.

If we get a forecast for a serious frost and freezing temps overnight, I sometimes cover my rows with plastic. But sometimes I forget and they do just fine. Here’s a few other tips for planting that I’ve learned the hard way.

The distances between plants suggested on the seed packets are for real. Sometimes I read them and think they’re being overly cautious. I always live to regret this and end up stepping on plants as I try to weed and performing acrobatic feats just to water the veggies.

Mulch or cultivate the soil between rows on a regular basis. This is how you keep weeds from getting ahead of you. A great tool for keeping the weeds in check is a stirrup hoe (looks like a stirrup on the end of a stick). There is no shame in mulch. If you can save leaves in a pile each fall to use for this task you’ll save money. Straw works OK too, but things creep in. Newspapers are good if you can get them weighted down with water and maybe some stones until they start to disintegrate. (Check to be sure your paper uses vegetable based inks. For you locals – the York Daily Record does use vegetable based ink.)

Don’t plant too deep. I’ve committed this crime many times. It usually happens when I’m planting a lot of seeds in a hurry and use a hoe to fill the row back in. The general rule of thumb is to cover the seed with soil as deep as the seed is big. Most seeds are pretty small. You don’t need much soil over them. The best way to do this is by hand and carefully, patting down the earth over the seed as you go. If you plant too deep you’ll wait much longer to see any action and some seeds won’t make it at all.

Put up big signs. You think you will remember where your rows are. You think you will be able to see the little popsicle stick markers. You assume that digging the seed packet in to the soil at the end of the row will help you remember what’s planted there. Here’s what I know – my memory is fading (I don’t know how old you are, but odds are you are no longer a teenager, so yours is on the downward slope too). Popsicle sticks quickly become camouflaged by the dirt, upended by the trampling feet of children and pets, or blown away when the soil begins to dry. Seed packets disintegrate almost overnight and the wind tends to blow them away. You need big signs – I use scrap wood and paint stirrers (free at the hardware store!) and use paint pens to label them. My daughter and I like to write inspiring things on the backs of these signs too. (See my post April 15, 2009 “Planting Seeds and Inspiration”). If you don’t label your rows well, you may mistake newly sprouted lettuce for a weed (lettuce basically is a weed so this is understandable).

Stay on top of the weeds. Don’t wait for them to overwhelm you. Pull a few EVERYDAY and it won’t seem too bad. If you enlist your children’s help (and you should), supervise their weeding or you may lose more than the weeds. Personally, I haven’t had a whole lot of luck putting the kids to work. They are happy to pick, but weed only under duress for large sums of money. Wish I could tell you different, but I have to be honest.

Plan your walkways as carefully as you plan your planted rows. You need to have somewhere to walk – remember that tomatoes get very bushy and pushy, cucumbers and squash can sprawl all over, and carrots and onions will keep nicely to themselves (but don’t handle being stepped on very well). I’m hoping to make some homemade stepping stones this year with the kids using small pizza boxes and a bag of cement. We don’t order out pizzas, so we’d love some donations from those of you who do (hint, hint).

Put up posts on all the corners of your garden to keep the hose from being dragged over your plants. After all that hard work and diligent weeding, it would be a shame if a hose snapped your almost ripe red pepper plant in two. This is a MUST do. We put four foot tall metal fence posts on the corners (shorter stakes tend to do more damage to my shins).

I’m sure there is more to say, but I’m watching a rooster making his way towards my pea row, so I’ve got to fill my water cannon. Happy gardening!

Of Weeds, Lettuce, and Tomatoes

OK this is going to be a boring garden post. So if you’re tired of me writing about gardening, you can skip this one. I checked though and I haven’t written about gardening in nearly two weeks! Gardens require maintenance, sad but true. There was a time when I just planted seeds and left them to their own devices. I figured whatever I got was better than nothing. But now I know better. A minimal effort can bring great rewards.

Take weeding. I hate it most days, but I’ve come to find a sense of satisfaction in a weed-free tidy garden, or at least patches of weed-free tidy garden. My garden keeps getting bigger and it becomes impossible to keep all the weeds out. You do what you can.

Mulch is one tool in the battle of the weeds. You can lay newspaper around your established plants and hose it real good for an inexpensive, if unsightly, mulch. If you’re rich, you can just buy mulch and surround your plants. Be careful though, I would caution you that most mulch is not the least bit organic and could leach any number of chemicals in to your soil. I save the commercial mulch for flowers. I don’t worry if they aren’t so organic. Straw is another good choice for mulch, and it will compost in to your garden during the fall and winter.

Mulch aside, it comes back to weeding. I prioritize my weeding efforts. I weed closest to established plants by hand, careful to get the entire weed. Between the roes, I use a stirrup hoe (looks like a real stirrup with sharp edges that you work back and forth over the soil) to just scrape off the top layer beating back the weeds in mass and keeping the weeds from going to seed and expanding my problem. It doesn’t always look pretty but it keeps things under control. Most importantly, weed after a good rain. There’s no point in weeding when the ground is dry as bone, unless you use a hose and hose the area you are weeding, which seems a little backward to be watering your weeds.

Weed every chance you get. Don’t leave all your weeding for one day – can’t be done – or it can and your back will complain about it later. You’re outside admiring how beautifully your tomatoes are taking to their training, you pull a few weeds. You’re killing time waiting for your kids to be ready to go to soccer, you pull a few weeds. Your kids are driving you to drink, instead go outside and pull a few weeds. Every chance you get – pull a few weeds. Sorry, but it’s a never ending process. I've considered using my children as indentured servants to take care of my weeding problem, but I don't want them to resent the garden or anything that comes out of it. Some children can be convinced to help by cold hard cash. Good luck with that.

How is your lettuce growing? As painful as it may be, it’s important to thin your lettuce. You need to pull baby plants that are crowded. You’ll want to keep thinning (and eating the babies you pull) until your plants aren’t touching. This necessitates that you thin as they grow. If you’re lettuce stays cramped and crowded the leaves on the bottom won’t get sunlight and they’ll rot, rotting all the leaves around them too.

If you eat lettuce like I do, you’ll soon have bare patches in your lettuce rows – plant more lettuce. In fact, plant lettuce in any spare spot you have. They love to grow in the filtered sunlight under other plants. Tuck in more lettuce in any spare space you have, and that includes flower beds. Walk around in the early afternoon and figure out if there are places in your gardens that only get morning sun – perfect spot for some more lettuce (or spinach).

Once you’ve picked your lettuce, washing it can take time. Know this going in. When you buy store bought lettuce it has been washed by some high pressure lettuce washing gadget and still you have to wash it because there are little specks of dirt. The lettuce you pull out of your beautiful garden will be covered in dirt, grass clippings, and bugs. The lettuce you bought at the store was once covered in those things too, plus some chemical fertilizers. When you are washing your home grown lettuce, take care to wash it one leaf at a time. Nothing can put you off homegrown lettuce like a bite of slug with your salad. I soak all of my lettuce in my sink as I’m washing it so the bugs will detach themselves or drown. I pick up one leaf at a time for a gentle hand scrubbing before placing it in the salad spinner. Once all my lettuce is clean and dry, I place a dry paper towel in the bottom of a plastic bag and load in the lettuce on top. The paper towel will soak up any water and keep my lettuce from rotting. I keep these bags in the crisper drawer of my fridge and the lettuce will stay fresh for nearly a week.

On to tomatoes – hopefully yours are looking happy and bushy by now. It’s time to give them a trim. Grab your hand clippers or kitchen shears and carefully trim off any of the lower branches whose leave are touching the ground. Then as your plant grows and you begin tying it up to your tomato fence or stake or basket, gather the leaves that are in danger of drooping to the ground and wrap your tie around them as you tie to keep them off the ground. This may sound confusing, that’s why I added the picture up top. The bottom line is you don’t want any leaves touching the ground. If they droop on the ground they can rot and spread that rot to your entire plant. That’s why you sometimes see tomato plants that are bushy and green on top and brown and scraggly on the bottom. They may survive, but they won’t product nearly the same number of fruits.

When watering tomatoes, do all you can to water the ground under them and not the leaves themselves. A good deep watering at their base is much better for them than a sprinkle from your automatic sprinkler. It takes time, but everything that matters takes time. You should know that by now.

Tomatoes need support, like all of us. You can buy tomato cages at the store that do a great job of supporting your tomatoes. The problem I’ve had with them in the past is that it’s impossible to pick the tomatoes that grow inside the baskets. You’re stuck like the monkey in that experiment – you can’t get your hand back out of the cage unless you drop the tomato. Maybe you’ve had success with these cages, but not me. There are lots of other options – fences, stakes, trellis, use what works for you. We’ve used fences in the past, but after last years six foot high tomatoes, this year my husband has made it his personal quest to accommodate the tomatoes no matter how tall they get. He borrowed his system from the tomato gardens he sees in China where he travels for his work. Using skinny boards, he has built a wooden frame that is six feet high with boards going across it at one foot intervals. As the plants grow he uses torn pieces of cotton clothing or sheets to tie the plants. This is a great way to recycle your old t-shirts. He plans to train the tomatoes to snake in and out of the cross boards as they grow up so that the weight will be evenly distributed and the fruits will grow on both sides of the frame. I’ll post a picture on my blog so you can see the tomatoes’ progress. I’ll let you know how this plan works out.

Peas of all shapes and sizes should be ready about now. Remember to pick early and often if you want to prolong your season. It’s just about cherry season too, so watch your local farms for pick your own local cherries.

One More Time With Gusto

If you are an organized gardener you know about succession planting. It’s something I aspire too but somehow can’t seem to master. My gardening style is a bit free form and-what-am-I-in-the-mood-to-do-today. But this weekend I actually managed to plant another couple batches of lettuce in some old flower boxes that have taken the dive from our deck one too many times. I’m not sure if a careless cat or a careless Frisbee sent them sailing, but at any rate they are cracked and missing their edges enough so as to not be presentable. But they’re just fine for extra garden space and make an excellent lettuce box. I’m loving my current crop of lettuce – prizehead especially – tastes like a butter lettuce. Fresh salads for lunch and dinner from here until the first frost if I’m successful with succession planting.

Succession planting simply means planting another crop of something you’ve already planted. Ideally (and here’s where the organized gardener has the advantage) you space out your planting so that you have a constant ripe crop of said vegetable. This doesn’t work with everything, especially vegetables that have a short growing period. And some successions have to be spaced out to avoid the worst heat of the summer. You can plant a second crop of peas again in late July/early August to get a fall crop. There is some faith and chance involved in second crops. There are years the early frosts kill your efforts. There are many summers when I put in my second crop of peas as soon as my first start climbing the trellis. I love sugar snap peas enough to chance a few seeds for a July crop of peas. And it has worked out some years, but most years the heat kills my peas before I get a true crop. Still, to me it’s worth a try – it’s only seeds.

Beans are a natural successionist (new word – I just coined it). You can plant a new crop as soon as your first looks like it will make it. Depending on how much you like to eat/freeze beans there is no end to your summer bean crop since they can tolerate the heat and they grow quick.

My advice when it comes to vegetable gardens is grow what you like and grow LOTS of what you love. Just because beans are easy to grow doesn’t mean you have to plant them. I only like one type – an heirloom seed called Montpelier French filet bean. Yum. So that’s all I grow. The rest of the family isn’t big in to green beans either, so there are no complaints. Tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, strawberries, and lettuce are my first loves so they take up the largest patch of real estate. Anyone can figure out your tastes by a quick glance at your garden.

Weather, varmints, and seeds can all surprise you, so it’s not too late to plant something. There’s always something to do besides weed. Experiment and see what you can grow. It’ll just cost you a few seeds. Besides putting in that next crop of lettuce or beans, here’s a few other things that need to be done this week:

1. Prune the lilacs. If you have lilacs don’t forget that they need to be pruned after they bloom (not in the winter like so many trees and shrubs).

2. Plant more lettuce. You can never have enough. Plant them in boxes or find a shaded spot in your garden (under the peppers or broccoli?).

3. If you’re planting corn, nows the time. Watermelon too. I’d hold off another week or two on pumpkins and guords if you want them timed out to be ready for Halloween.

4. Watch your farmer’s market – it’s just about time for strawberries! I’ve already spotted a couple red ones in our patch! And find somewhere you can “pick your own” with the kids.

Let Us Eat Lettuce

Lettuce is one of my favorite foods. If you asked my kids what their Mommy likes to eat the most, without a doubt they would tell you that my favorite food is salad. My favorite food is really good European milk chocolate and jumbo shrimp steamed with Old Bay seasoning (but not together), but beyond that it is probably salad. Take me to any restaurant and I’m likely to pick out a funky interesting salad over the prime rib. This time of year lettuce is eating up my grocery bill. But come summer that will all change thanks to lettuce boxes. It used to be that in this climate the only time of year you could count on lettuce in your garden was late spring in to early summer. Once the big heat arrives, lettuce just bolts straightaway. But I’ve discovered a wonderful secret. Sometime last winter Organic Gardening magazine (another must read) published plans for a “lettuce box” and I quickly began badgering my husband. True to form he built me a lettuce box even better than the one in the magazine.

What’s so great about a lettuce box? And for that matter what is a lettuce box? A lettuce box is a movable growing near constant salad. It is a box of any size (mine are about 2 feet by 3 feet) built with a depth of only about 4-6 inches. Lettuce doesn’t need deep soil to thrive. It has handles on the ends and a bottom made of wire mesh and lined with biodegradable plastic mulch sheets. Built out of relatively light wood, just about anyone can move it, even when loaded with rich organic soil.

My boxes do fine in one location all spring, but once the heat arrives, I began to move them daily. I let them luxuriate in the sun some mornings and move them to the shade come afternoon. By doing this I am able to grow lettuce all the way through summer and into the fall. If it got unbearably hot I could have moved them inside, but last summer was a fluke around here and we never got the killer heat at all. In the original magazine article it showed someone arriving for a cookout with their lettuce box in tow – that’s a little over the top, even for me, but you could do it.

The lettuce box is the perfect solution for people who have too much sun or too little garden space. I keep two boxes going so that when one is still emerging the other is in full bloom. I dream of a third or even a fourth, but for now I’m working with two. I do still grow some of the bigger lettuces in my garden. The boxes are better for loose leaf and smaller types of lettuce like tom thumb. This past week I got my first box up and running. While I wait for the lettuce to germinate, it’s living in my mudroom, but I’m hopeful that the box will be outside full time in a week or two.

I’m sure you can build your own without the help of the plans, but if you need them look online at http://www.organicgardening.com/ (search for “salad box”). Lettuce boxes could also be made out of window boxes or pots, depending on your lettuce needs. Mine are many, hence the multiple boxes.

While we wait for our lettuce, here’s my latest favorite salad dressing –

Asian Vinigrette
½ cup seasoned rice vinegar (splurge and buy a good one)
½ cup canola or safflower oil
½ teaspoon crushed garlic
1/8 teaspoon of stevia (or 2 tablespoons of sugar)
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper (less if you’re not a big pepper fan)

Combine in a jar and shake until well mixed. Delish. Try it with cashews and croutons – simple and wonderful. I’ve been eating it for my lunch for weeks. Today I made it with orange flavored stevia - I may be addicted.