Wednesday 22 April 2009

Grow You Own Lettuce For Salads - it's Easy

Grow Your Own Lettuce for Salads - It's Easy

Lettuce is great for salads and with spring here an ideal time to grow you won. Besides the expense of buying lettuce from the supermarket, your own homegrown versions will be much more pleasurable on this vegetable that is really easy to produce. You don't even need a garden to grow your own, a soil filled small bowl on a sunny windowsill is just as effective as in a garden.

There are just a few things to remember when growing your own lettuce.

  • The roots don't like being moved or transplanted, so when you sow the seeds you should try and use a system where the roots will remain untouched throughout the growth. A good way to use this system is to grow the seeds in cardboard egg boxes, which can then be transferred into another place without disturbing the roots, and the cardboard with decompose by the time it has been harvested. You can also buy little biodegradable pots in garden centres very cheaply.
  • Lettuce like warm sunny places, so make sure the final position of your lettuce is in an environment that has these conditions for the best lettuce results. What lettuce doesn't like is excessive heat and lack of water.
  • Pests can be a problem, slugs, snails and birds etc. I don't have a problem with this and don't use anything else other than a nylon netting cover to deter birds and check the lettuce every day in the morning and evening handpicking slug and snails that leave an obvious trail. I do not use poisons although many people do.
  • Buy lettuce seeds locally, they will have varieties that are suitable for your region.
  • The soil needs to be able to retain moisture yet have enough drainage to prevent standing water. With this you are sure to get good crops from most types of soil. If you had planted the seed originally in compost based soil this will give the roots a good start before growing on.
  • Sow batches of seeds every two weeks, that way you will extend the harvesting times and have table ready lettuce for an extended period.

If you haven't tried growing lettuce before, have a go it's as easy as growing grass you'll never look back once you have tasted your own home produced salads.

Image via Wikipedia


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