A few words about our lettuces

We grow five types of lettuce Lactuca sativa, red and green of each type. To produce lettuce continuously, we make successive plantings of nearly 500 plants each. Lettuce I was planted in the flower garden, because the field pictured below was not ready. Pictured below are two rows of Lettuce II, in the background, which are presently being harvested. Lettuce III (middle) will be ready soon. Lettuce IV (foreground) was field planted on July 1.

Coastal Star (green romaine) and Outredgeous (red romaine), also known as cos, has thick, crisp, juicy leaves with sweetness unmatched, according to Johnny's Seeds www.johnnyseeds.com


Saladbowl (green oakleaf lettuce) and Red Saladbowl (red oakleaf lettuce) has delicate, tender lobed leaves.


New Red Fire (red leaf lettuce) and Two Star (green leaf lettuce)


Sylvesta (green bibb lettuce) and Red Cross (red bibb lettuce), also known as Boston or butterhead, has large ruffly outer leaves surrounding a soft folded and blanched heart.


Nevada (green) and Magenta (red) Batavia lettuce, also known as French crisp or summer crisp has very crisp leaves that are sweet and juicy.

ENDIVE...coming soon!

Your comments please:

• What is your favorite lettuce?
• Your description of the taste of one of our lettuces.
• Share a recipe.

Summary of June: RAIN

It has been raining, raining, raining off and on through the month of June.  About 3 inches of rain came in the storms over the past weekend.  It's been wet and muddy, and difficult to get into the fields.  Mom has been taking lettuce into market three days a week.  The earliest planting of lettuce is picked clean.  The weeds are flourishing with the rain.  Even if we pulled them they would be able to keep on growing because the roots can't dry out. 

Before the major rains, we did get a lot planted: zucchini, pumpkins (pictured above), cabbage, and more lettuce.  Check out this snapshot from Google maps that I have labeled with crop locations.

The first set of string is set up on the tomato patch (though this picture just shows the stakes set up) and the plants are beginning to blossom and set fruit.  Dad has run irrigation lines to the fields, but only had to run water a couple times.  The excess rain has prevented him from adding fertilizer and nutrients to the field through the irrigation water, besides keeping him from doing some additional planting and tilling.  He says he won't complain about too much rain, though.  It doesn't do any good and there are other places experiencing drought.  Besides that, sometimes with rain comes the beauty of a rainbow.