I counted the lettuce today and we have seventy-nine. Well actually seventy-seven after today because we ate two at a ‘4th of July’ bar-b-que. Some would say that’s too many (like my Dad) but I’m not so sure. They’re not all the same variety. Around 40 of them are Little Gem in varying degrees of growth, 20 are Pentard Red curly lettuce and the rest are Webb’s Wonder iceberg affairs. We like lettuce and if we find we don’t like it ‘that’ much then we know some other people who do.
I find lettuce really easy to grow. All mine are from seed, sown directly in the ground and when they get to an inch or so long I space them out to around three or four inches apart in rows, depending on their variety. I haven’t had any major problems with slugs up to now (which maybe explains my success) and they seem quite happy even in the hot weather we’ve been having lately. Now all I need is for my cherry tomatoes and cucumbers to catch up so that we can have a ‘proper’ salad.
79 Lettuce? Not as noisy as 76 trombones. I have never managed to grow lettuce of any description beyond seedling stage – munched into oblivion by slugs every time. I’ll admit that I’ve not tried massively hard, because we’re not huge salad eaters, but I’m certainly envious of your success. Well done!
Thanks Clare – those pesky slugs eh? Did you watch Gardener’s World on Friday. Monty did this whole thing about slugs and snails (apparently they have thousands of teeth). And they reported back on the results of their organic slug trial – Bran came out on top as the best anti-slug option. It was interesting.
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