Lettuce in Pots

Speaking of container gardening, here's a photo of "L" growing lettuce on her patio table. What a super idea! Around here gardeners are switching away from growing lettuce in the ground where it can easily be contaminated with slugs. 

One of the benefits of this system is that the pots and table can be moved as needed. Another plus is that the plants are at an easy level to access. No bending over. The back appreciates that! 

Lettuce in Cans

The lettuce is growing better than I expected. So far, the cardboard box idea is panning out ok. I'm real curious to see how things look a month from now. But right now.....really nice and promising.

I'm also trying individual plants in a large pot and/or can. I have a limited number of recycled pots, but I can get plenty of the large cans from down at the dump. Thus I have the opportunity to plant quite a bit of lettuce this way. The goal is to get a larger "head" of lettuce than I anticipate getting from the cardboard box method. One plant per pot and they should end up looking like a convention head of lettuce. We'll see how well it works in the mini greenhouse set-up. 

If both methods work ok, then the cardboard box method will be for growing baby leaf lettuces using the cut-and-come-again method. The pots will be for individual heads. 

I like using the large cans in place of pots. I punch a few holes in the bottom for drainage.....

And the lettuce seedlings also seem to like them too.....

Since these metal cans are not in direct sun, I don't expect them to heat up the roots too much. But we shall see what happens over the next couple weeks. 

Growing Lettuce

I'm eager to try out my new mini greenhouse tables. First crops to try? Lettuce and spinach, both greens that I like eating raw, and both that suffer from slug attacks. 

Ok now......so I've got these nifty tables, what next? I need a container of some sort to hold soil. I could go buy pots or tubs, or I could experiment with repurposing something. I'm choosing the second option, because my focus is on low input/low impact farming. Besides, I priced garden tubs at Costco and they are $20 a piece for half barrel size. Occasionally I find plastic tubs and wooden dresser drawers at the dump, but not nearly enough to use on this project. So my mind kept looking for alternatives. (Not "alternative facts" but alternative pots!) 

How about sturdy cardboard boxes? I have a seemingly endless source of these. Line them with a recycled black plastic trash bag, and so far I have a zero cost growing container. I could fill it with garden soil, but prior experiments show that I aught to spring for promix growing medium if I hope to get good success growing food. So I've decided that I will. For now I will buy it new, but in the future I will look for sources of discarded promix from the local marijuana  growers. 

So l selected some low-sided fruit shipping boxes, lined them with trash bags, cut off the excess plastic, filled them with moistened potting mix. So far, so good. 

I could sow seeds, but to date I've had far better success starting seeds and carefully planting the baby seedlings into individual pots for future transplanting. In anticipation of this experiment, I sowed some seeds. The timing has been good because the seedlings are ready to divide and replant. So into my first box they go.....

Rather than aiming to harvest individual large lettuce heads, I'm opting to first try the cut n come again method. Thus I've planted the seedlings in three rows per box with the intent to harvest leaves by snipping them with a scissors as I cut down a row. Well, that's the plan. We shall see. 

That little red tag you see is a piece of survey tape on which I wrote the name of the variety and date it was started. Just one of my labeling methods.