With the unpredictable economy causing food costs to go up all the time (quite predictably), I have decided to grow a bed of salad ingredients. My fear is that lettuce will go to $18.00 a head!! My goal is to grow enough salad to average one salad for 2 people once a week. And maybe a little extra lettuce for sandwiches. In March I planted seeds for radishes, beets, romaine lettuce and black seeded simpson lettuce. I built a makeshift frame over which I put frost cloth during the cooler nights of March and April to speed up germination and growth.
It worked! Last night we enjoyed our first salad from the 2012 Salad Bed! Last week I planted more seeds - more lettuce and some carrots - by the cement wall towards the back. I will keep planting salad ingredients all summer. We'll see how that goes. Lettuce does well in Utah in Spring, but it tends to bolt in the Summer. Bolting is when a plant sends up a stalk, flowers and goes to seed. It the case of lettuce, it's leaves also turn bitter. I'll take my chances and hope for salad all summer!
Your garden is fancy pansy as well. Is that your watering system?
ReplyDeleteNo that's the structure that holds up the frost cloth - made of pvc pipes and flexible irrigation tubing. Easy and Cheap!!
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