Two Feet in the Dirt

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 we grow today contain a hormone that inhibits germination in soil that is much above 80 degrees. With the recent heat waves, it’s easy to see why salad mix would be less than willing to sprout! I like growing salad mix enough that it was worth my time to put in some extra effort to figure out ways to get it to germinate during the hottest part of the year and it was actually pretty simple. I took some leftover pieces of the shade cloth we use to cover our hoop house during the summer and put this, supported with hoops, over the newly seeded salad mix bed. And voila, within a few days we had near perfect germination! Fingers crossed this technique continues to be effective in the coming weeks.

Another incredibly interesting fact we learned this week is related to tomato ripening (or lack thereof!). You may be wondering if we decided not to grow tomatoes this year as none have as yet appeared on the market table. In fact, we have hundreds of tomato plants with thousands of huge green tomatoes on them, but they just haven’t been ripening. Mike looked into it and found out that when temperatures exceed 85-90 degrees, the ripening process slows or stops because the plants cannot produce the pigments lycopene and carotene that cause the color in ripe tomatoes. With several weeks of temperatures consistently in excess of 90 and nighttime lows rarely falling below 70, it’s not surprising we’re seeing so little ripening. Fingers crossed the cooler weather that is forecast for next week will get things going!

Fortunately, we’ve still got plenty of tasty veggies that are ready to harvest. See below for this week’s harvest lists and we’ll see you at the markets!

Farmers Katie & Mike

This week at the market:

• Salad mix
• Arugula
• String beans
• Eggplant
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers
• Onions
• Garlic
• Kale
• Rainbow chard
• Carrots
• Beets
• Potatoes
• Piracicaba broccoli
• Basil
• Peppers