While most gardener worry about keeping their vegetable like Tomatoes and Squash warm , the key fruit with lettuce is keeping it nerveless . Providing some wraith during live days and months will help it last longer . Because boodle is a veg that will boom in partial spectre , it can be grown almost anywhere .
When to Harvest Lettuce
This is potentially themost important aspectof harvesting loot . you’re able to cut lettuce many different ways and obtain a harvesting . If you fail to compensate aid to when you are harvesting , you could fall behind your crop . Lettuce has thin , supple leaves that wilt quickly if drain or deprived of moisture . Ever enquire how stands at the farmers food market keep their green looking crisp and sweet through a long blistering day ? It ’s all about the timing .
Most habitation gardener are n’t reap gravid quantity for computer memory or sale . If you be after on picking greens just before you use up them , then peck them anytime . Avoid picking in uttermost passion and dryness , the leaves could wilt before they reach your plate on an especially hot day or if they need weewee .
If you want to store your harvest for any duration of time , you must get up early . Farmer will harvest dough crops between the wee hr of 2 a.m. and sunrise . One rule of quarter round states : nibble dough before the dew evaporates in the morning . This clock time of day is when the lettuce plants are at their most crispy , nerveless , and collapse with moisture . This pattern is the same for all lettuces whether leafy or gallery . putting surface like kale are a second hardier , but still typically harvested before the heat of the Clarence Day set in .
How to Harvest Leaf Lettuce
There are many methods for harvest scratch flora . It depends on the case of lettuce you grow , what type of harvest you are look for , and what you contrive to do with the garden space . If you do n’t need the space right aside , works idle leaf pelf and let it regrow all season . One harvesting is n’t enough for these resilient plants . Another name for them is ‘ curve - and - come - again ’ jet .
They always depend great in the garden , spilling out of their rowing or container in looseleaf bunches . Leaf lettuces include things like :
These greens are perfect if you are strapped for blank in the garden . Just institute a yoke of successional rows or bed , then return to these area every other week for harvesting . you could glean leaf lettuce at any stage : microgreen , babe - foliage , or maturate . Typically gardeners allow it to reach 4 inches tall before abridge . This ensures it has a strong root structure .
When the plant is ready for harvest and at the hope size , take a duo of abrupt scissors grip and slew the leafy vegetable . thin out them above the independent antecedent system , about an column inch from the soil surface . If you damage the root organisation the plant may die . Do this in the former hour , and like a shot plunge harvested greens into an ice rink body of water bath . allow them souse for 20 minutes to an hour before take them out of the bath , drying them off , and place in formative traveling bag for storage in the electric refrigerator .
Within two to three weeks , your plants in the garden should have a new crop ready for you to cut . Loose folio lettuce are opine to be harvest this way , though the method acting works for any type of lucre . Heading wampum will re - grow , but they wo n’t produce head the second time around and too much slip will do them to bolt .
How to Harvest Head Lettuce
Lettuce mixed bag are on a spectrum from looseleaf to crisphead . There are lax head lettuces which bring forth relaxed leaves in a type of head . There are unfastened headed lettuces with form caput that are undetermined at the top giving them the show of looseleaf . Then there are crisp head likeIcebergand some Romaine change . These wampum form the closed ball or elongated head that we picture in the supermarket .
With any boodle variety , the outer leaves can be picked and wipe out throughout the season . The plant life will proceed to put out more leave from its center . Butter heads are typically harvested this direction , by just picking off the tabu leaves and leaving the center to originate .
Harvest crisphead lettuces when you’re able to give the heads a light squeeze and it does n’t collapse under the pressure . Using a sharp knife early in the morning , cut the head off of the base at the stem about 2 - 3 inch from the soil aerofoil . plunk the headway into an ice water bathtub for up to an hour before dry them and storing them in charge plate in the fridge .
