Two Feet in the Dirt

One week later and the tomatoes are officially upon us! The harvest of both slicing and cherry varieties is ramping up by the day and we’re looking forward to having a good selection at the market this weekend. At the same time that the tomato harvest is starting, fall planting is really starting to kick into gear. The fall carrots have germinated and are ready to be thinned and weeded. The fall beets went in this week along with some cabbage and the kale, collards, and chard will be planted in the next few weeks.  We’ll be a little light on the salad mix this week, a casualty of the...

While we take a break from growing head lettuce in the hottest months of the year, we aim to grow salad mix all year long. However, this can be a struggle in the middle of summer for the simple reason that it is very hard to get lettuce to germinate in hot weather. I finally discovered the reason why this week and found it fascinating. Lettuce is a descendant of a wild plant originating in the Mediterranean area, where summers are hot and dry, meaning that any wild lettuce that germinated in the summer would most likely die. As an adaptation to avoid this, wild lettuce and its descendants that...