Let Us Plant More Lettuce!

It's been almost 3 weeks since the last blog on Dec 24th.   Let's bring you up to date as to what is going on in the garden!  First or should I say last, on Jan 12th I decided it was time to replace the existing landscape timbers surrounding Bed 1.  The first  two layers of landscape timbers were installed back in the spring of 2013 … so it has been almost 6 years.  Bed 1 is the far bed with the tomatoes in the picture below from 2013.  I replaced the four layers of rotten landscape timbers with just two layers of fence post.  Hopefully the fence posts will last longer than the landscape timbers.  I did add a layer of Colorado River Rock under the new border so the bottom fence post won't sit in wet soil.  Six years is not too bad though.  The landscape timbers in the other 5 beds are also 6 years old and will probably need replacement within the next year or two.  I was able to use a ratchet to remove the lag screws which held the 4 layers of landscape timbers together in Bed 1.  Looks like I will be taking a load of rotten wood to the Greenhouse Landfill next Saturday.  Should be fun! By the way, one side benefit was that I got 20,992 steps in yesterday according to my Fitbit Surge!

Also on the non-lettuce front, the Yolo Wonder Bell Peppers continue to produce.  There haven't been any new blooms in a number of weeks, but I'm still picking great tasting peppers (albeit a bit small) for my salads with home grown lettuce of course.  I pinched off spent pansy blooms about a week ago and we've seen a resurgence of blooms this past week … and the Euryops and Hibiscus have started to bloom again … some of the daylilies have shown new growth … could be the warm weather we've had the last week or so.

The Sun King Broccoli are doing quite well now.  I mixed up some Miracle Grow about a week ago and the larger broccoli crowns are now 4 to 5 inches across.  Not bad for a vegetable I use to take up space (in lieu of pulling weeds from barren soil) during the winter before I plant Tomatoes, Peppers & Cucumbers in early March.

So what up with those Four Seasons, Sunset, Yugoslavian Red, Green Ice and Salad Bowl seeds I planted indoors back on 12-08-18.   Well, most of the seedlings have been planted this past week.  I put the Four Seasons in Bed 1 and Sunset in Bed 4 on Jan 06 followed by the Yugoslavian Red in bed 2 on Jan 08 and lastly the Green Ice and Salad Bowl in bed 3 on Jan 13th.   Now I wasn't sure on my 09-27-18 planting which lettuce seedlings were Sunset versus say Lollo Rossa (from a Looseleaf Blend mix of seeds) or which plants were Four Seasons vs Yugoslavian Red.  We'll know this time around because I planted these three (no Lollo Rossa this time) in separate beds.  The Sunset & Four Seasons seedlings look pretty much the same starting out.  The Yugoslavian Red seedlings initially are green then develop black spots.  See below for lots of pictures of the four beds of lettuce starting out with a ground level view.  I tried separating the seedlings which sometimes were four per cell when I transplanted them into the garden.  Needless to say, each of the four beds probably received 80 plus lettuce seedlings.  We should be swimming in lettuce (if we haven't been already) in another 45 to 60 days!