How to harvest lettuce

Lettuce is a wonderful cool-weather crop that is best enjoyed while the leaves are young and tender. To harvest it, all you have to do is snip off the outer leaves. Be careful not to uproot the plants. I'm finding that harvesting encourages the lettuce (and other greens like turnips, mustard and spinach) to put on new leaves.


Even though it's now too late in the season for it now, I experimented with growing lettuce a couple of years ago. I had quite a few varieties of lettuce/greens in my garden, growing them for the first time. They include Romaine, Caesar's Favorite Romaine, Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard, Purple-Top White Globe Turnips, Double Choice Hybrid Spinach, E.B. Nace Mix Mustard, Black Seeded Simpson Leaf Lettuce, and All Season Romaine Mix Leaf Lettuce. I think.


I had my doubts about whether my Square Foot Garden (the method I was using at the time) would produce enough lettuce/greens. But not to worry. I was able to get this much salad every day or two, so I was happy. It's more than it looks like. Kind of like ordering a salad at a restaurant and it seems bottomless. Ever had one of those salads?

First try at cantaloupe

Cantaloupe 10 days after planting seeds. Why do my things take longer than the Todds'? But notice the cute marker. It denotes that this is cantaloupe planting date #1 (of 3) and that I planted on 3/21/14. I like to label things.

Cantaloupe on 5/9/14, 19 days after seeds were planted. I mulched with oak leaves.

This year I am trying cantaloupe after hearing a rave review from a gardener who knows what she's doing. "They go crazy. You won't believe how many you'll get," she said. So I thought, why not.

I planted Hale's Best Jumbo seeds on 3/21/14. The Brazoria County Master Gardeners suggest this variety: Ambrosia. The only one I could get seeds for around here was Hale's Best Jumbo. The seeds cost me $1.35 and I put a lot of thought and new technique into it, but I might as well experiment, right?

Oh those crazy tomatoes

Seven weeks ago I planted sad, spindly, 2-inch-tall tomato plants. Now look at them -- some are over 3 feet high! Realistically speaking they'll probably reach 8 feet. Radioactive soil? That's certainly possible but I sincerely hope not. Rather, credit goes to the mushroom compost I had brought in this year. Seven cubic yards and enough men to till it in and build my rows.

Half of my tomatoes are from seeds I started indoors in Dixie cups. The others were seedlings I bought when I lost faith in the Dixie-cup batch, which rallied when I decided to plant them in the garden.

So this year I have 50 tomato plants, way too many for just two people, so if you stay on my good side and you're local, I might turn my garden into a freebie U-pick zone. Stay tuned.

Here are the tomato varieties I have: 24 Better Boy, seven Fresh Salsa Hybrid, six Bush Early Girl Hybrid, eight SuperSauce Hybrid and five Celebrity Hybrid.

Before I counted today, I had given away six plants to my friends Joyce and Francis, though I'm not sure if they (the tomatoes) survived. There's something sad about gently pulling out a giant tomato plant and sending it home with someone else, because those babies almost immediately wilt. It's a little like sending your children out into the world: They may wilt at first, but you hope all the effort and prayer and years and tears have given them strong roots on which to build the rest of their lives. Amen.

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More about tomatoes:

Determinate vs. indeterminate tomatoes

How to remove suckers

How to tie up tomatoes

Stem bumps