Salad Days: Off Experimenting Again


As you can see the windowsill grown lettuces have come on in leaps and bounds over the past month and I've been harvesting them over the past couple of weeks. It's just as well I've been growing these, as the lettuces outside - whilst under various cloches and cold frames - are still shivering away and haven't put on much growth.

The one exception to that is 'Black Seeded Simpson'. Bren said it's a hardy variety and she's right! I'll be starting to harvest those leaves sometime next week, after I've finished with the pictured batch of 'Amaze' for the time being.


Just before I started harvesting, I realised I have the ideal conditions for a little experimenting. There are at least 3 different methods of harvesting: whole plant, cut and come again and picking. It wasn't until last year  that I realised cut and come again and picking are different harvesting methods. The above picture shows you the difference: the picked lettuce in the foreground is left with a central core of intact leaves, whilst the cut one to the rear is cut completely across and left to regenerate.

Both methods are deemed to be superior to the whole plant harvesting method because the yield and/or harvesting period can be extended substantially. Cut salads will regenerate leaves about three times and last year I was able to pick 'red salad bowl' leaves from July until the first frosts in November. It was perfect for growing salads in small spaces. However, I've yet to find any references as to which method does indeed have the highest or longest yield, so I'm off experimenting again - using my windowsill grown lettuces this time :)


I also have some oca to experiment with. The tubers are teeny tiny and Thompson & Morgan have seen fit to issue a notice admitting they're small (owing to huge demand this year), but they should still grow OK. Owing to the cool weather I've chitted them first, which showed one of the tubers isn't viable. The rest are now planted into modules with some coir and are awaiting the warmer weather (at the end of the month - in theory) and planting out time. Oca can be used in salads, so I've added it to my Challenge for this year. NB if you're growing oca (or achocha), you might like to help Emma Cooper out with her M.Sc dissertation project by filling out a short questionnaire.


This month I've also learnt:

  • The pictured mustards, pak choi and mizuna were indeed ready as estimated last month. However, they're going straight to seed! Even though the weather is still cool, they're still flowering at their usual time. Luckily the elongated stems and flowers are also delicious in salads. I wonder if this means daylength is the trigger for flowering?
  • The difference between hydroponics and aquaponics. Hydroponics is growing plants in water without soil, or with a vastly reduced amount (like my windowsill planter). Aquaponics is the same, with the introduction of fish into the system. This reduces the amount of nutrients needed as the waste products from the fish provide them instead. More on hydroponics to come...
  • Putting spiky pruned rose twigs on veg beds (as shown in Veg Street) really does stop cats using them (the veg beds that is) as a loo.
How's your salad this month? Add the link to the URL of your salad post in Mr Linky below, or leave a comment...


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 52 Week Salad Challenge is sponsored by Greenhouse Sensation.

Note to readers: sponsorship goes towards my blogging costs and does not affect my independence.

Comments

  1. ediblethings24 May 2013 at 08:36

    Hi Michelle,

    I hope that I'm back, after I've been away due to having to look after a family member. However, I'm really far behind at the minute due to never being at home for the last few months. I'm going to try and forage for a post for the next roundup, but I may have to watch from the sidelines until my seeds have caught up.

    I tried the plucking method last year. the Big Guy, the guinea pigs, and I ate like kings from only a few plants. Of course, I cannot compare this to cutting, but it certainly was successful in terms of crops. It works well in a no-dig situation as well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. marigold24 May 2013 at 08:50

    My best salad so far this month (and year!) is the self-sown chickweed which I'm eating every day. I also have a small amount of mizuna and rocket in amongst the weeds, and some radishes nearly ready to harvest. #mustryharder

    ReplyDelete
  3. colleen24 May 2013 at 09:12

    I'll be interested to hear how your OCAs do. I bought some at a local potato fair, chitted them, put them in pots, and they are doing rather nicely, even the tiniest most shriveled one. I'm just a little wary of where to plant them out so they don't take over the plot!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lea24 May 2013 at 10:00

    Thanks for hosting Salad Days!
    I very much enjoy reading and learning about growing lettuce and other salad ingredients. I've added my post on growing onions.
    Have a wonderful day!
    Lea
    Lea's Menagerie
    Mississippi, USA

    ReplyDelete
  5. Donna@Gardens Eye View24 May 2013 at 12:04

    I'll join in on the first Monday in June when I do my garden recap...my veg bed with lettuces has been thwarted by ants...so I am growing micro greens in shallow containers

    ReplyDelete
  6. Diana Studer24 May 2013 at 23:20

    Have you met aerponics? Touted as a vertical gardening solution for the future. The plants are misted. I dunno, sounds a bit utopian to me.

    ReplyDelete
  7. VP29 May 2013 at 10:46

    Mel - great to see you back and I hope all's well with your family now. You're quite right, the picking method works really well with a small number of plants over several months. I did really well for the 2 of us with just 9 lettuce plants last year, supplemented with various herbs, rocket and nasturtiums. It's a great way of having a productive yet tiny space :)

    Colleen - yes, they do seem to need quite a bit of space! It'll be interesting to see how they do compared to potatoes.

    Lea - thanks Lea - it was interesting to read about your experiments, especially as I haven't done much with salad onions so far :)

    Donna - I'll look out for you then, thank you :)

    Diana - I have, but haven't tried it. I've started reading up on it in earnest in preparation for my hydroponics post...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Janet/Plantaliscious2 June 2013 at 16:33

    Hi Michelle, I have been lousy at blogging this past month, but thanks to "Black Seeded Simpson", "Marvel of Four Seasons" and the rather over named "Maravilla De Verano Canasta" I have ample salad despite my mustards and rocket going to seed a couple of weeks ago. I sowed them in mid February and have been picking them for over six weeks now, in fact I could have been picking earlier but I kept forgetting about them. Marvelously robust, all three. Will be fascinated to see what your trials say about picking vs cut and come again, though for me picking always works best as I am usually picking just for me. I felt really good at being able to deliver lush colourful salads to visitors for the past two weeks though, best lettuces ever, thanks to the strange lack of slugs...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love hearing from you and welcome thoughtful conversations :)

Comments aiming to link back and give credence to commercial websites will be composted!

Your essential reads

That blue flower: A spring spotter's guide

Image
Spring is a prime time for blue flowers and my daily walks currently have several from the same plant family* lining the local footpaths. As I walked past the Donkey Field the other day, I overheard some children ask their parents** what the pictured blue flower was. It reminded me it's often mistaken for those other familial blues and this time was no different, as they said it was forget-me-not, instead of the green alkanet it actually is. As well as similar flowers, most of these plants are hairy in their nature, flower around the same time, and favour damp, shady places. Many of them are great for pollinators too, especially bees and this week's warm weather has certainly drawn them to these flowers. This makes it even more likely for these plants to be mistaken for each other and it's a great opportunity for me to put together a spotter's guide in case you find the same flowers on your outings. Staying with green alkanet, the key features which set it ...
Read more

Jack Go To Bed At Noon

Image
Last year this rather exotic looking flower appeared on mine and several other allotments for the first time. Having been stumped (again) by Mr Allotment Warden as to its identity, I rushed home to find out what it was. It's salsify, aka the marvellous Jack Go To Bed At Noon - named as such because its flowers always close by midday. Here you can see both open and closed flowers - making it seem even more exotic and alien than in the first picture. I think this must be the cultivated version because the flower in my Francis Rose Wild Flower Key looks exactly the same in form, but is bright yellow in colour and called meadow salsify . Its other common name is Goatsbeard, which must be a nod to the fantastic dandelion-like clock which forms the seed head. With 'parachutes' like those shown above, who knows how far our plotted plants came from. I rather like the photographic dissection of the seedhead found in this link . Salsify is edible: its lateral shoots and fl...
Read more

Red Nose Day - Gardening Jokes Anyone?

Image
The nation goes ever so slightly bonkers on Red Nose Day - hurrah! Previously, it's been very easy to join in - usually via a dress down day at work plus lots of people up to mad things at the station and in the office. Everyone smiling for once - it's a real feel good day and all in a good cause. This year's different - every day's a dress down day for me now - my friend L suggested yesterday that perhaps I could have a dress up day instead and whilst that's a good idea, I confess that ballgowns and tiaras don't really feature in my wardrobe: scruffy student's always been my favourite look. So my Red Nose Day contribution for this year is to compile a list of gardening related jokes. For each one (clean ones only please) you leave in the comments below, I'll make a donation of 50p to the cause. Here's a few for starters just to get you warmed up: Q Why do potatoes make good detectives? A Because they keep their eyes peeled. Q What did the grape...
Read more

Salad Days: Mastering Lettuce

Image
I've decided one of my salad challenges for this year is to grow as many lettuce varieties as I can, ready for the publication of my planned Factsheet* later on. The idea is to grow as many of the Tried and Trusted lettuce varieties last year's Salad Challengers helped compile, then provide a visual guide and as many lettuce facts as I can muster. So far I've found around half of those listed**. Then naturally whilst I was out searching - because such is the way with seeds - a number of other varieties found their way home too ;) A couple of weeks ago I sowed 22 varieties***. Just the simple act of sowing them has me intrigued. Why are some lettuce seeds black and others white****? They split into about half white to half black in my sample and as far as I can tell it's nothing to do with whether they're a type of cos, iceberg, or whatever. I sowed them indoors and popped them into a propagator on the windowsill. The soil's too cold outside for sowing ...
Read more

VPs VIPs: Derry Watkins of Special Plants

Image
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Derry Watkins at her home, garden and nursery - the acclaimed Special Plants - just a few miles along the road from me. I first met Derry at one of her open garden days last year and was keen to find out more about her wonderful garden and running an independent nursery. She specialises in tender perennials and regularly goes on plant hunting trips to find new treasures, particularly in South Africa. As well as running Special Plants and opening her garden under the NGS scheme , Derry holds day courses at her nursery, hosts Special Tuesdays from April until September, lectures and has written a couple of books. How did you find your way from Connecticut to the UK? I'd started a biodynamic vegetable garden in Connecticut and we used to have people come along at weekends to help out. A particular young man turned up: he returned many times and at the end of the summer I married him. So it was all down to love? Isn't that the...
Read more

#mygardenrightnow: heading into summer with the Chelsea Fringe

Image
Ahhhhhh, that's better! I love walking through dewy grass in bare feet, not that there's much in the way of grass on my back lawn this weekend. My wild and woolly lawn has morphed into meadow of sorts this month, which even NAH admits looks attractive*. It's also proved a great source for my Flowers for mum project so far, yielding self-sown perennial cornflowers, lamb's ears, and lemon balm in addition to the blooms you can see. These originated from elsewhere in the garden, the ox-eye daisies must have blown in from the A350 nearby. * = he got very stroppy about the weeds aka self-sown foxgloves in the lawn one year, so he's come along a bit since then. Skimble's demanding to say hello to you too. He does enjoy the patio when it warms up. If the embedded video doesn't work try this link instead. The Nectaroscordum are a revelation. I planted the bulbs around 2 years ago, but it's only this year they've bloomed properly. The bee...
Read more

Make Use of Mildew

Image
On my garden patrol this morning I spotted some powdery mildew on a couple of my new Verbena bonariensis plants. I suppose it was almost inevitable as I prefer to grow my plants hard - this means no water for them unless they look absolutely desperate. This approach means plants root themselves more deeply and have a better chance of survival during spells of dry weather like we've had lately. However, it also means I run the risk of problems like today's, especially with any garden newbies planted late in the season. We've had a good drop of rain overnight, so this should help my plants survive. I'll mulch them later today to help lock in the moisture as it's water stress which encourages the mildew to take hold. I've also removed the infected leaves and sprayed the rest with a milky drink.* I'm also pleased to find there's a use for my infected leaves. Oliver Ellingham at Reading University has started a PhD - sponsored by the RHS - researchi...
Read more

The Resilient Garden

Image
  Part of Tom Massey's Resilient Garden at RHS Hampton Court I've been pondering VP Gardens a lot lately. Last year's drought conditions set me off initially, then our harsher than usual winter combined with this summer's flip and flop weather means the thinking continues. It's a huge topic which I freely admit I'm struggling to get my head around. Tom Massey's Resilient Garden  at Hampton Court recently  tackled this topic brilliantly and was a timely interlude which gave me much food for thought. There he encapsulated the detailed research he'd found which informed both his show garden and book of the same name. I think it's one of the most important show gardens I've ever seen. It's clear the way I garden needs to change so that I have my own resilient garden. I haven't worked out the exact details yet, but Tom's book plus a couple of others (see below), alongside the rainwater management handout from the show garden's  sponso...
Read more

Chelsea Fringe 2014: Shows of Hands - Episode I

Image
The gloves NAH used to build the raised bed . The effects are L to R, top to bottom:  Original photo, Warhol, HDR, Green tint, B&W, Posterize, Boost, Cross process and Sepia Welcome to Shows of Hands - my Chelsea Fringe project for 2014! As you can see I've been having a bit of a play around in Pic Monkey for my first contribution. You're welcome to join in between now and 8th June 2014. The idea behind this year's project is to highlight the tool most precious to a gardener: their hands. How do I take part? It's simple. All you need to do is take a photo of hand(s) in a gardening context and then share it via your blog or other social media (such as Twitter or Facebook), then make sure I know you've done so. I've set up Mr Linky below for your blog contributions. The Chelsea Fringe photo on the right sidebar links to this post, so you can easily find it again when you're ready to add your contribution. If you share your photo on Twitter, ...
Read more

Testing Times: Tomatoes

Image
  I've run a couple of tomato trials this year. The first is a revisit of the biochar trial with Oxford University I attempted some years ago (with a different organisation this time), and the second is a trial of a water gadget called Plantsurge which I was given to try at Malvern Spring Show earlier this year. Most of you have probably heard of biochar already and the claim that this inert, carbon-rich material can help soil fertility and plant health. The RHS information in the above link says results can be mixed, with reduced effects found in alkaline soils. This may help to explain the lack of difference I found in my previous trial as VP Gardens is on a lime-rich soil. Plantsurge is a different beast altogether. It's a strong magnet which is attached to a hosepipe as shown in the photo above. It's claimed that it softens water, with the result more like watering with rainwater. The higher nitrogen found in rainwater is thought to be beneficial to plants. Gardener...
Read more