Jumpstarting My Garden: On Seed-Starting Inside

Last year was my first year trying seed-starting inside. While it was not a slam dunk, I found that for some of my veggies, it resulted in stronger, higher-yielding plants. It's also more cost-effective than buying veggie starts.

This year, I've started multiple varieties of lettuce, jalapeno and Serrano peppers, tomatoes (primarily San Marzano), kale, and herbs including cilantro, parsley and basil.

3 Lessons on Lettuce

I harvested a lot of lettuce this year for our daily lunch salads. But I had much higher hopes for my lettuce harvest.

Recently, I discovered that birds had been eating the lettuce seedlings that were coming up. I caught the problem too late though (thinking the seedlings were just taking their time growing) and while I covered up some of the remaining lettuce with row covers, I think it was too little too late. (You can also put something shiny/reflective near where birds are eating your veggies; some people suggest CDs hanging nearby, but I'm sure there is some garden art somewhere that would serve the same purpose.)

Bird netting would work, as well.

Anyway, I do have some seedlings that are doing OK that I planted later on, but because of a few mistakes I made this year so far, I have learned a couple lessons about growing lettuce:

1. Don't plant too many seedlings too early. Actually, early is fine. But I could have - and should have - staggered my transplants in the garden. This fall, when I plant again, I will stagger the plantings, so that all the lettuce I have doesn't get ripe (and later bolt) at the same time. Now I know how few lettuce plants I actually need to make a salad, since they will keep growing if you just harvest their outside leaves.

Our Daily Salad Routine, Now Straight from the Garden

How wonderful is it that I can just walk out to my garden in the morning and harvest some lettuce for my salad for lunch? Pretty darn wonderful.

I was almost tempted yesterday to skip my daily salad. For over a year now, my husband and I have been taking salads nearly daily to work for lunch. I think it's made a huge difference in our health, and on our wallet.

How to Store Freshly Harvested Lettuce

I found a nifty little tutorial on how to store the lettuce I harvest from my garden. You can read it here from Pinch My Salt. It definitely works. 

First I put the fresh lettuce in a big bowl of cold water, and then rinse each leaf individually after taking it out of the bowl.

Beautiful! I love all the colors that come out of my garden.

I spin it in my handy salad spinner, which I use every day now. Ours is from Oxo, and it works great.

And then as the blog recommended, I wrap the lettuce in a paper towel and put it in a Zip-loc bag.

So far, this has resulted in crisp lettuce that lasts several days, which is nice, because I can make a big harvest of lettuce and prep it for several days worth of lunches.

First Harvest Results in a Lovely Salad with Blueberries and Yellow Cherry Tomatoes

Growing lots of lettuce!

When I discovered my spinach had bolted, I decided to start harvesting my other lettuce for a salad. It turned out really well.

I took some red sails lettuce, some romaine, buttercrunch and a few pieces of kale. Added some blueberries and some yellow tomatoes for a deliciously sweet and fresh salad.

Yum!

An assortment of fresh garden greens!

Added blueberries and some yellow tomatoes. Delicious!

New Growth After the Snowstorm

A second snowstorm hit. Actually, the third, but the second since I planted my garden. I actually planted additional lettuce, some arugula and a few more kale plants the weekend before the second. But my garden survived. You'd hardly know it was hit.

Weekend Project: Mesclun in My Deck Rail Planter

I finally got one of my deck rail planters set up this weekend. I planted mesclun mix, another great container plant. My man doesn't like flowers on the deck - we don't want to attract the bees while we're having a beer. I have to say that that's fine with me. For some reason, I can't keep flowers alive.

So this year we're planting lettuce and herbs on the deck.

My Garden Survived the April Snow in Colorado

I planted last weekend, and then several inches of snow fell, starting the next day. We had several days of snow this April. A good thing for the drought, a bad thing for, well, people who really want spring to start. I guess the former is better.

I covered my lettuce and spinach (and rhubarb because it was close to those) with a light row cover the morning I knew it was going to snow. I laid it loosely over the plants and staked it down. I'm not sure if they really needed it, given the hardiness of a lot of lettuce and spinach types. I left the kale open and the onions.

My garden is in the bottom left of this picture, the day it was snowing. This isn't the full amount of snow we received.

I checked on it the next day or may have been the second day after the snowfall, when the snow had started to melt.

Getting Cool Weather Plants in the Ground: Lettuce, Kale and More!

I planted some cool-weather veggies last weekend - pre-Snowpocalypse here in Colorado. (For the third week straight it snowed, in April.  I'm ready for spring!)

I was so eager to get out there, and I wanted my lettuce to get a good start this year. I know that you can plant lettuce even earlier than I did, as it is a frost-hardy plant, but being a beginner, I'm pretty cautious.

I even expressed doubts about planting when I did; my husband responded by telling me to trust myself. I've read so much online and in books about gardening this year that I have too much information in my head, and it's making me think too hard about what's right and what's wrong. I didn't think at all last year, and things turned out OK. I think a new gardener needs to balance what they find in books with what they find with experience.