Growing Lettuce - Even in a Pot in Winter

[Rick]

I saw Our Little Farm mention she had started lettuce (in pots on the porch I think). I wanted to post these observations.

Elliott Coleman said if your lettuce has frozen to wait for frozen lettuce leaves to thaw before cutting them. This works well and is testimony to the ability of lettuce to survive Winter. We use Cooks Garden Fall / Winter , Spring Mix and Heat Wave. We have had Sping Mix "jump" 5 to 10 feet and replant in the lawn. Our Fall Winter sat out til December before the snows covered it. Well I, brushed the snow out of the pot, put it in the cabin we are working on near the 6 by 6 South door. Days after cutting the leaves to the dirt we found a couple more salads and yesterday we saw the leaves coming back strong again. I will begin a new thread for "how Octobers Fiesta Broccoli from Territorial Seeds tasted the next summer.

No man is an island? 98 readers so far, and not even 1 howdyadoo!

[Sparticle]

Howdyadoo!!!!!!!!

Eliot Coleman is the man!

[my3boys]

So I've thrown away potted lettuce for nothing? Oh well.

I'm ashamed to say as a long time gardener I never knew this.

I'm going to look into the varieties you've mentioned.

You learn something new every day. I guess, in my case anyway, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

[Ohio dreamer]

I'm jealous. No south facing window that would work (porch is on the south side of the house...so no light) and 6.5 days of gray skies a week here. I don't have a single house plant...they die within a month.

[Rick]

Howdo

The soil has been just damp enough to moisten the newspaper the pot sits on and that with infrequent watering.

The South doors are a nice Winter treat.

[Horse Fork Farm]

Mmmmm. salad. Seeing as how were both WV residents I hope your weather is better than mine. Its certainly worth a try here so I'll plant some lettuce in a pot and find a good window. I am Sooo sick of cold and snow...

[MaineFarmMom]

Stick with the cold tolerant varieties of lettuce. Freezing will kill many varieties quickly. Tatsoi, claytonia and other greens work well too. Anything growing in February is a good thing!

[Our Little Farm]

Great thread. We have had some sunny days here and I put some soil in a black dish and placed a clear tote over it (upside down). It is on a covered back porch, but will get sun if it comes out. Checked the soil a few days ago and it is amazingly warm, I think it is too early for the seeds to come up yet, but will check and give updates when I can.
Will it work? Well I don't know, I have no window sills indoors, and dont want to bump up my electric bill with lights just yet so this is what I am doing. It's worth a chance, I love a fresh salad! I am trying spinach too.

[MOgal]

I have a hoop house but didn't get to plant it at the best time last fall--Eliot Coleman's books are my bibles for that project. Since I missed out on growing in the hoop house, I'm doing more things in the house in south and west facing windows this year. I usually have two pepper plants, one a plain sweet pepper and the other a TAM jalapeno pepper but this year I also have two Peron tomato plants, lemon grass, lemon verbena, 2 bay trees and 2 sweet potato vines in one pot. The jalapeno is covered with peppers right now and there are two small sweet peppers and some blooms on the other plant. I started the tomato plants from suckers when I realized I'd let my seed sit in the water to ferment too long and most were sprouting. I plan to take cuttings from the two plants and start at least 5 plants to go into the garden. This is the first year I've kept lemon grass in the house. The lemon verbena looks better than any other LV I've tried to winter over. I'll take cuttings of it soon too. The sweet potatoes are tips from last summer's vines that I stuck in soil just to see what they would do. I have a lemon tree and a lime tree as well but I think the lime tree, at least the graft, is dying.

Before I traded for the hoop house, I had great luck overwintering herbs and growing salad veggies in a cold frame too. It just wasn't so pleasant to work in as the hoop house is. It usually smells like soil when the frost leaves it in the spring and even on coldest days like today, if the sun is shining, the temps will get up into the mid and upper 60's. Does as much good for your soul as the veggies do for your body.

[derm]

I grow a small patch of lettuce, arugula and spinach under a double layer of floating row cover every year. It has lived through ice, heavy snow, subzero cold every year. I plant around labor day and cover it way before the super cold hits. I am hoping to get into it this week after the warm up and then have fresh greens until they go to seed in may. The spinach leaves that grow this way get huge and are my favorite. A 4 x 5 patch will be allucaneat for 3-4 months.

[Explorer]

Originally Posted by Our Little Farm

I have no window sills indoors,

I saw something a while back, don't remember where, in that the person had taken sections of rain gutter with end caps and made a series of "row" pots to hang in their window. As I recall the gutters were spaced about a foot apart all up and down the window. I have been planning to do this, but haven't as of yet.

[jessepona]

Nice! I'll have to look for those varieties.

[geo in mi]

You can also try this: keep the bottom ends of onions and put them in some soil. Onions being biannual, they grow again and you can have cuttings for flavoring.

geo

[Rick]

Originally Posted by derm

I grow a small patch of lettuce, arugula and spinach under a double layer of floating row cover every year. It has lived through ice, heavy snow, subzero cold every year. I plant around labor day and cover it way before the super cold hits. I am hoping to get into it this week after the warm up and then have fresh greens until they go to seed in may. The spinach leaves that grow this way get huge and are my favorite. A 4 x 5 patch will
be allucaneat for 3-4 months.

Little lettuce, carrots, mushroom, broccoli, croutons, zesty spouts and maybe snow peas.
Mmmmmmm. We just had the 4th harvesting from that pot of lettuce! Labor day - 30 days or so before shutting Summer gardens round here.

Free onions and greens! Yes. We are gonna add some Khaki Campbell Duck now, and start attracting honey bees.

Happy Trails.

[Our Little Farm]

Well my clear upside down tote 'cold frame' on my back porch is working! Lettuce seeds are up already, and looking good.