With careful sowing and picking, your salad can last through the winter
The humble lettuce, stalwart of sandwiches, side salads and much more, is easily overlooked as a serious ingredient, but there is a gulf of difference between a buttery, sweet, tender leaf and one that is bitter from poor growing. Timing is important: if you hit the sowing windows at the right point, you don’t need to sow a great amount. For my household of two, both of whom love lettuce, we need 10 full-grown plants to pick from at any given time of year. For a family of four, where salads are serious business, I would grow between 15 and 20 plants.
Rather than harvesting a whole head of lettuce, though, you should remove only the lower, mature leaves, taking up to only three leaves per plant in any one picking. If you grow them in this way, it is possible to start picking once the plants are six weeks old and continue for about 14 weeks before the plant is exhausted. To pick whole heads, it’s best to wait until the 10-week mark, so you’d need to sow roughly double the amount of seed to get the same harvest as from picking individual leaves.
Continue reading...* This article was originally published here
No comments:
Post a Comment