What Growing Lettuce Says About Me

Every year, I grow lettuce. Not just lettuce, but several kinds of lettuce. I'm always hopeful that this will be the year that we won't have the wildly fluctuating temperatures. Lettuce is unfazed by frost that kills (and did kill) some dear coleus starts I forgot to bring inside. Heat is the thing that turns lettuce bitter and makes me surly, too. There are just a certain amount of days that it takes for lettuce to be ready to eat. I started off this season with some plugs that I grew under lights in mid-February. They went into the garden March 15, pretty much as early as is possible here. Of course there was a record high of 82 degrees the next day. It was 85 degrees on April first, no fooling.

Then on the second of April another record high of 89, followed by hard frost on the eleventh and twelfth. I had to rush out with sheets to cover the strawberry patch both nights, but was unconcerned about the lettuces.

Another frost on the twenty-first of April only made the lettuces laugh. By then, some were big enough to make great salads with the bumper crop of radishes. These made such a lovely bouquet I had to take their photo. Yesterday, it was another record high. It was ninety-four here and some of the lettuces finally had had it. When a leaf is plucked on a bitter lettuce, it oozes milky stuff, like a milkweed. I've discovered it doesn't even pay to taste these because they will be dreadful despite looking quite tempting.

The worst ones were the Deer's Tongue, which I failed to notice took 52 days to harvest. Too long! Some of these Tom Thumbs were still good and might reach salad size shortly.

These bronze beauties, Merveille de Quatre Saisons, French for Marvel of Four Seasons, are still quite good. So, what growing lettuce says about me is I continue to be optimistic about having a lovely spring here in Missouri, with heat only a possibility after mid-June.

By the way, the strawberries are doing great and have berries already, which is surprising since they are supposed to be a late June-bearer. I'm still keeping the sheets ready.