Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, 9 o'clock
Vegetable: Lettuce
Seed/Transplant Date: Grand Rapids and Salad Bowl: May 21 or 22, I think; definitely no later. Cimarron Red Romaine: same date, but almost total failure (old seed); replanted around June 8.
Soil Preparation: Same as the Yin Dot.
Yesterday I cleaned up this bed for its debut here. This morning I went out to take its picture in the best light, and . . . just look at all the green between!
Of course, I can't complain about the rain last night, even if it did help those weeds re-root.
I could have planted lettuce a lot earlier, but I didn't have the ground ready. (Next year.) I planted all my lettuce at once, rather than in succession, thinking it might soon be too warm for good germination. But my romaine lettuce seed turned out to be too old - I only found two seedlings - so I got some new seed, and did a late planting after all. Last week's cool rainy weather was perfect for it, and I have good thick rows of romaine sprouting now. They don't show up in the photo, but they're in the bare area in the foreground (top photo).
There are three varieties of lettuce, with rows of onions in between. I used onion sets to mark boundaries between similar vegetables, because they sprout quickly, and because it's good to plant onions throughout the garden to discourage pests (or so I'm told). Unfortunately, they didn't discourage whatever it was that munched off the larger of my two original romaine seedlings. A jackrabbit? I've never noticed any lettuce losses before this year, but I know there are jackrabbits around. Maybe I shouldn't have planted the lettuce so close to the caragana hedge.
1 comment:
Deb said in one of her recent garden posts that she was planning to put up electrified fence next year. Your lettuce thief made me think of that.
Isn't it wonderful to see something growing!?
Still raining here. It's been almost two weeks of on-again-off-again.
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