Category Archives: Santoro lettuce

Greens update

 

I grew too many greens this year. I planted more seeds than I needed because I thought the seeds might be too old so I planted more in case the germination rate was low. Guess what? They all germinated.

Lettuces have been transplanted outside in green house-Thursday Mar 23, Pak Choi, Bok Choi, arugula, spinach and a few more lettuces are going into cold frame up by house. I had to fix 2 areas from mice or bigger animal-one big hole where someone dug in from  the under a side board in my cold frame and in the green house, mice were getting inside a completely covered bed that has been mice proofed for 3 years. I dug down in the cold frame, removed the soil where it was. I used hardware cloth to block the underside and the inside and outside of the wall to block out whatever got in there. Hopefully this will solve the problem. And on the inside of the green house, where I have 2 eight foot beds that are completely covered I put self sticking window gasket on the edge of the lid and a latch where there may have been a gap for a small mouse to get through to close up that possibility. The green house looks good with no one nibbling on the lettuces. Since I just planted more in the cold frame, the verdict is out if I’ve thwarted the rascal. A few days will tell if I succeeded.

When I put the lettuces in the green house last week I forgot to look at the weather for that night before I planted them and afterwards saw the projection! It was suppose to get down to 21 degrees that night here in Santa Fe. Stupid me! I’m always telling everyone to look at the forecast before planting in early spring. The greenhouse stays about 5-10 degrees warmer than the outside air. I freaked a bit so I put down 2 sheets of medium weight row cover on top and that night I put a 3rd sheet of row cover over it, hoping they would all survive. I use medium weight row cover which has about 3-4 degree protection from freezing weather. It worked-so all of them came through beautifully. Just goes to show you I should listen to my own advice! I lucked out!

Trouble in the cold frame

I started lettuces from seeds inside under lights with NO heat which I then transplanted in the greenhouse on Feb 3rd. I also planted spinach, arugula and bok choy in the cold frame.

Everything in the greenhouse is doing great. Every nite I flip the winter weight row cover over them to protect them from the freezing nites and flip it off in the day so they get more sunlight. They are all under cages I built to keep mice out-works beautifully.

Unfortunately, in my cold frame, when I uncovered them, I don’t have any cages and mice munched 29 spinach plants (only 1 survived), 8 Bok Choys, and chomped 2 of the Arugula (I guess they didn’t like those much).

I hadn’t gone out in a few days after I planted the spinach/bok choy on Feb 3rd because the days/nites got really cold but that didn’t stop the mice! Only 1 spinach made it-the rest were eaten down to nothing. I still have 8 severely eaten bok choys and all the arugula that I re-dug up and they are back in pony packs inside again under lights to see how many will actually survive. To help with all the shock, I water with seaweed fertilizer and Vit B-1 (for plants). Meanwhile I need to tighten up the lid on the cold frame to hopefully keep them out (this coming week when weather is nicer). I will put out a few sacrificial survivors in about a week to see if the mice still get in and eat them.

Spinach is one of my favorite spring crops but must be eaten before it gets hot or it will bolt. So today I am planting more spinach seeds. Takes about 2 weeks from planting seeds to transplanting the seedlings into pony packs where they grow for another 2 weeks-so 4 weeks from planting seeds to planting outside (with protection). Let’s hope it won’t be a bad year for mice again like two years ago!

Greens in the Green House!

So my greens made it through the worst of winter (I hope) and have really started to kick in growing. They went on hold (stopped growing) from around Thanksgiving to mid-January when we had less than 10 hours of daylight. But since then the daylight hours keep increasing daily which is a signal for the plants to grow again in earnest. In case you are wondering when I planted all this, I planted the carrots, arugula and spinach last September inside the greenhouse, and the red and green lettuces I started from seed under grow lights inside my house on January 2nd and then were put out in the greenhouse in early February.

To keep the greens from freezing in the dead of winter in the greenhouse which is unheated, I’ve cover them with one layer of winter weight row cover every night and on some really cold nights (when temperatures got down to 14-17° F), I put two rows of row cover over them. One night the lettuce actually froze. But I read in Elliot Coleman’s Winter Harvest Handbook that if you don’t harvest it when it’s frozen, it may be fine by the afternoon when it warms up and sure enuf, it thawed out and is still growing great. You just can’t harvest it when it’s in a frozen state.

My Greenhouse a few summers ago

In the greenhouse are some carrots which aren’t very big yet (about the size of a pencil in circumference) some green and red lettuces, arugula and spinach, all of which will be harvested before the Green House (a play on the word greenhouse since my greenhouse was painted green) gets too hot. In fact when the day temperatures reach the 50’s, I put fans on to blow the heat out of the greenhouse.

 

Pray for heat, girls!

You see, I don’t worry about it being too cold but worry about it getting too HOT which will cause the lettuces and spinach to bolt (make flowers) which will cause it all to go bitter and then it is only good for our chickens who don’t seem to mind the bitterness at all. In fact I think they pray for the heat!

Looks like some of the lettuce and spinach are now big enough to pick the outer leaves while leaving the inner leaves to continue to grow. And a big bonus for me is to see so much green now already at the start of March! I love going into the greenhouse right now. Refreshing when the outdoor plants are still sleeping…

Cool season crops have begun

transplants-2-weeks-old

When I was looking through what I plant each year, I realized I actually grow many varieties of cools season crops (like greens/lettuce). I started some seeds of cool season crops inside under lights but no heat on Jan 17!  I never put the heat mats on for cool season crop seeds, only for warm season crops and it is way too early for them just yet.

I started:
Asian greens: bok choy, pak choy, Wasabi arugula

Lettuces: 4 Season Lettuce butterhead, Yugoslavian Red butterhead, and Santoro butterhead lettuce. Can you tell I like butterheads?!

Leeks: Solaise, King Richard and American Flag

Onions: Candy (it is an intermediate or neutral variety) which is they type of onion we have to grow here.

Spinach: Carmel-Just planted the seeds today. Still have some spinach plants that have overwinter nicely outside in a raised bed with only winter weight row cover on it. By planting a crop of spinach last fall, I’m hoping I get a bumper crop of spinach in March! The variety of spinach I like the most is called Carmel which overwinter last year and looks to do the same this year. You can get seeds from Johnny’s or plants from Agua Fria Nursery.

4-season-lettuce

four season lettuce is looking good

Today I transplanted up lettuces and Asian greens to pony pots from seed trays. The plants are looking good but need to grow more before I put them out in my green house or cold frame. You can plant outside in sunny raised beds in March but all-greenhouse, cold frames or just plain old beds will need winter weight row cover on the little starts to protect them from our cold nights.  I’m hoping to put them out by beginning of March. The varieties I grow at this time of year are very cold hardy. I’m trying to get a head start as our cool season crop season is pretty short here before it gets too hot and everything bolts. And there is nothing better than spring spinach or lettuce!

Extending the Season-Making a Low Tunnel

low-tunnel-2016

These broccoli transplants were put in on Aug 24, 2106

I taught a class in late August on Planting for a Fall Harvest where I showed the students you don’t have to have a Greenhouse to extend the season. You can also have a cold frame or even simpler is what I call a low tunnel. Now with the cold nights, you definitely need something over your new fall transplants.

low-tunnel-before-row-cover

Here is the frame of the low tunnel before row cover-just fencing material curled into a u-shape ready for plants underneath it

I like to make my low tunnels out of 2″ x 4″ fencing or even concrete reinforcement wire.  I just open up the fence roll, cut off enough so it will be curved above my plants and turn it upside down on the soil.

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row cover over the low tunnel protects crops at night

Cover it with winter weight row cover (1.0 ml).  I put rocks on mine to keep it from blowing away. Now you have a secure low tunnel that will protect your plants during the shoulder season that is closing in on us quickly. What is a shoulder season? It is the time of year when the temperatures can drop quickly at night near freezing and then heat up in the day. The temperature shifts can swing wildly during the shoulder season. We have a shoulder season in spring and fall. By making a low tunnel, you can extend the season and grow vegetables like spinach, arugula, kale, lettuce, bok choy, mustard, mesclun, radicchio and other cool season crops much later. Fall is a great time to plant cool season crops and it’s not too late if you get transplants now. It might be too late if you start from seed unless it’s lettuce. Try to pick varieties that are cold tolerant.

Harvest lettuce/spinach now

coldframe+04-2016

With summer here, the daytime temperatures will get hotter and hotter in June which is our hottest month of the year. It usually peaks between the last week of June and the first week of July (I know because it’s always hottest around my birthday then, and I try to leave town!)

So if you have any greens like lettuce, mesclun and spinach, you should consider harvesting what’s left of them now unless you are growing them in a shady place.  The pic above is my coldframe which should now be called the hotframe. I think I have one more harvest of all of those greens above before they BOLT. Bolting is when they put up their flower head. Once they do that, they will be bitter and only good for chickens or the compost pile.

This spinner can handle lots of lettuce compared to my regular spinner!

This spinner can handle lots of lettuce compared to my regular spinner!

Here is a great salad spinner I got for a gift last year. It’s a big salad spinner. It’s a 3 gallon spinner and believe it or not, they have bigger spinners for commercial growers. I grow big lettuce (Santoro-17″ across!) and it can spin the whole head at one time. Look at it compared to my other spinner! It’s HUUUUGE and such a timer saver. I also got some BIG bags to put the lettuce in.