Rivenrock Gardens Cactus Blog… go to www.rivenrock.com for edible cactus

Lettuce is one of the best home crops for the family garden. Lettuce can be hard to get fresh at times, and the price may be high, but lettuce can be grown in many conditions. Even unprotected it can take cold down to the low thirties. It can grow well in cool temperatures, even in snow conditions if in cold frames.

   The best way to get them started is indoors.. this will allow you to get them off to a good start. It will help keep the seeds warmer to sprout quickly… a set of lights can be kept on them until they have been up for a couple of days, at that time I take them outdoors daily, to sit in the sunshine or breezy conditions. The idea here is to give them some sunshine so they will grow quickly… but when it’s dark or cold outside, have them under lights indoors so they will grow quickly and be strong.

   Start with quality seeds, and don’t store them more than a couple of years…. once germination gets spotty as they age, it becomes sad to see just a few weak plants…. a healthy seedling needs to set out a root quickly and be able to help the leaves spread, taking in nutrients and converting them to energy. A healthy strong root is a good beginning to a healthy strong plant that will grow quickly rewarding you greatly for your time in growing them.

    Use a good high-quality potting or seedling mix. I use our own home made compost made from cactus. I’ve not found anything that grows seedlings like it will… but it has weed seeds in it…. the scientists would say to sterilize it to kill pathogens and weeds.. yet I think that would also kill the good critters in the soil that make our soil so healthy….. so I start with the knowing that I WILL have weeds… so I encourage you.. most folks are better off paying a bit for  a bag of seedling mix… 

   I like to start with a single small pot. This allows me to use the least amount of space under the lights… for the first week or so, they will take hardly any space.. . fill the pot to near the rim and press it down, add water, letting the entire soil-mix get a good amount of water. When it is fairly well saturated, let it drain for a time, then press the mix down with your fingers.. firming it to remove all air pockets. Then I take the seeds and sprinkle 25 or 50 of them over the surface of the soil. I use a mix from Johnny’s Selected seeds that is a mix of four varieties of leaf lettuces. I then sprinkle a tiny bit of the soil mix over the top of the seeds.. you barely want any soil….. 1/4 inch or so… and it must like all the rest be nicely screened.  Then cover the pot with plastic wrap or a saucer and set it in a warm spot for a few days. The photo below was taken eight days after the lettuce seeds were placed into the small square pot. Once they start getting their first true leaves, it is time to ‘prick’ them out and put them into individual containers. You can see there are green and red lettuces in the mix.. and two nettle seedlings among the lettuces, those came from the compost.

  These seeds started sprouting and exposed themselves above the seed mix four days after being seeded. These first few photos are the seedlings 8 days after sowing… they now have their first true leaves…. but they are too close together to grow for long in this small pot. They cannot ever grow to maturity, and are prone to disease at this close of a spacing.. so we now need to transplant them into planting packs that will have individual planting cells.. this will make perfect spacing in the garden easy. The tray to the left has the new cells that the plants will be placed into. It is filled with the same compost we used in the planting block… our own screened compost.

8 days since-seeding lettuces, ready for transplant into new cells

    To get the seedlings out, you invert the pot into your hand sliding the cube of soil out, and then you gently split it into two pieces.. lay one half aside and work on the one for now… never let the sunlight hit the roots if you can help it. Also, minimize root exposure to the open air.. the more air and sun they get, the more they can become injured. Never hold the stem of the plant nor the leaf stems. Hold the plants by a leaf.. this is a good handle, and your fingers will be able to more easily grip it without damaging it. While holding a leaf you can pry the soil from the roots.. and gently remove a plant from the cube of soil.

lettuce seedlings being separated for transplant

   The photo below show a lettuce seedling being dropped into a hole drilled into a transplant cell using a pen. Let the root go in.. you will have to shake the plants sometimes…. maybe even push soil down pushing the roots down gently as you lower it. This photos shows how hard the healthy seed has worked to make a huge root… don’t hurt it. Firm the soil around the seedlings after you press them in.. and then water from below, just to make sure it’s all moist.

setting lettuce seedlings into individual growing cells

 The photos below shows our light set-up. we’ve used the same tubes and fixtures for almost 20 years. They cost about $10 a set when we got them….. we had to replace a light bulb for the first time this year. We only use them for a few months in the winter/spring, and occasionally for a few weeks in the early fall (lettuce doesn’t like high heat for germination,so it works easier in the summer to germinate it indoors so it’s cooler.) From the time they germinated they were taken outdoors to sit int he sun every day… so they’ve been getting about 6 hours of good sunshine.. so this 18 hours of relatively weak light is adequate to make very good conditions.