A Small Jungle of Lettuce

Last year when I tried to grow lettuce, I only got a couple of sickly plants that never produced enough leaves for a single salad. I selected a blend from Park Seed known for heat tolerance called "Summer Glory". Living in Atlanta, I didn't necessarily expect success growing lettuce down here. So, my results didn't surprise me and I basically shrugged it off, tore up my sickly little plants, and planted it over with beans and squash.

This year, I had a dickens of a time getting my seed order in. So difficult, in fact, that I still haven't gotten one in. Yet, I had these two boxes sitting out there just waiting for seeds. So, some time in April, I pulled out last year's seeds. All I really had left for spring planting was the lettuce blend and a blend of radishes that did moderately well last year. I picked up some spinach seeds to supplement from the Ace Hardware at the same time I picked up bags of compost and some chicken manure fertilizer.

Lettuce seeds are notoriously poor keepers. I really didn't have high expectations that any would germinate at all. So, I planted out one box completely in spinach. The other box, I finished out the packet of radish seeds which came to about a quarter of the box. I planted the rest of the second box out in lettuce seeds, just the way I did last year making sure to only lightly cover them. Only, when I was done, I still had a lot of lettuce seeds left in the packet. If I didn't have high hopes this year that they would germinate, I couldn't imagine there would be a point to saving them another year. So, having heard people swear to surface sowing lettuce seeds, I lightly scattered what I had left over the lettuce section of the box.

I dusted off my hands, watered the box, and decided not to worry about it. School picked up the way it always does. I went out to check daily for about a week, and while I saw radish sprouts and spinach sprouts, I didn't see anything I could be sure was lettuce. School got even busier heading into the final stretch before graduation and I stopped really checking the boxes at all until around Mother's Day. Luckily, we had a wet spring.

As it turns out, surface sowing lettuce seeds is very effective.

When I went out to check the boxes, there were radishes and a healthy crop of spinach, all as expected. What I didn't expect was the small jungle of lettuce that confronted me. Not only did they germinate, nearly all the lettuce seeds must have germinated, and despite being packed in way too close to each other, they were thriving. (I think the latter fact has a lot to do with the chicken manure.)

So far I've harvested massive sections of lettuce twice and I have at least one more to go. The plants are all still growing strong despite the rising heat. Yay lettuce.