26 Sep How To Grow Lettuces
Having fresh salad greens available off-season is a culinary pleasure. With modern growing methods and transportation, one can purchase lettuce and spinach year ’round, but often at high prices. However, a gardener may find that picking up a package at the grocery store is nowhere near as satisfying as picking lettuce from your urban cultivator a few minutes before eating it.
Harvest your greens when they reach two to four inches tall. It’s a pleasure for culinary chefs to snip micro greens with kitchen scissors moments before serving their dish. Some micro greens, especially the lettuces, will continue to put on new leaves after harvest.
These should be fed a liquid organic fertilizer after each harvest. Other micro greens are meant to be cut when their first true leaves form, and are essentially finished after a single harvest.
After harvesting the microgreens you may re-seed more in the same tray. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different combinations of crops to determine which ones grow best together and which ones have the best taste in your salads, or other areas of meal preparation.
If you like the beet flavor or Amaranth and the red color you can combine it with some other greens such as cole crops or lettuces. They take about 8 to 10 days. Here are some combinations that we have found work well:
Purple & Diakon Radishes (photo 3) Amaranth + All Greens
Amaranth + Mild Mesclun All Lettuce + Mizuna
Amaranth + Spicy Mesclun Amaranth + Spicy Greens
Wildfire Lettuce + Komatsuna
Tips for keeping your Lettuces & Micro Greens happy
There are so many combinations to try, i you are going to growing a number of different seedlings together in your tray, you need to select ones that have similar growth rates. For example, do not combine seeds that germinate slowly with ones that germinate quickly.
Lettuces & microgreens are easy to grow and quickly offer a delicious reward.