Lettuce | My Raised Bed Vegetable Garden

Planting Seeds, Not Seedlings

There are plenty of vegetables that you can direct sow the seeds in your garden. Carrots, radishes, beets, corn, beans, peas and lettuces all are sown directly into the garden bed.

I now like to pre-treat the areas I’ll be directly sowing seeds into with BiotaMax. This ensures that the first roots the seedling [...]

This is my beautiful lettuce bed, now bolting to seed as the weather is warming. Each plant will send up a tall center runner that will blossom and finally drop seeds. You can see in the top right a red romaine plant that’s sent up the final throws of lettuce. At [...]

The Effects of the Cold

I’ve been talking with quite a few south Florida gardeners lately and we’ve all come to the same conclusion: the long cold winter really stunted a lot of our crops. My basil never got nice and tall like it usually does, and although it’s still growing, I don’t have the abundance of basil that I [...]

South Florida Summer Gardening

I grew this sunflower in my corn bed one year. I love the logarithmic spirals in the seed head. God is so cool.

I’ve received several emails from readers here in sunny zone 10 who want to plant a garden now, in March. I’ve told them all to go ahead with the warm weather loving [...]

The Harvest Continues

I harvested more broccoli again today. The seven plants have produced so much that I’m getting really tired of broccoli. As long as I keep picking off the florets, the plants will keep producing. I picked enough yesterday for two meals for us. The good thing is that because it’s fresh, it’ll keep [...]

Beware of Kitty

This is Felixity. She is one of the feral cats I feed and she and Blackie hang out with me in the garden. She hates it when I’m picking lettuce because I keep pushing her away. She loves to head butt and cuddle and hates being ignored. Yesterday I was picking [...]

FINALLY!!!

The first slicing tomatoes are finally ripe. Three medium-large tomatoes magically turned deep red overnight, and I just had to slice them up for sandwiches. Along with a few handfuls of the mixed lettuces from my last picking, we enjoyed the BEST BLT’s we’ve had in a long time. You just can’t buy tomatoes this [...]

Harvesting Lettuce - Again!

Yesterday I picked lettuce again. I took the outer leaves from every plant and it took me about 30 minutes. I harvested enough lettuce to completely fill my garden basket and the plants still look pretty much the same! We had a big salad last night for dinner and I have [...]

The Continuing Harvest

These broccoli plants are still producing florets. I have to admit that I’m getting a little sick of broccoli. These plants are prolific, too. I picked them clean a few days ago, and there are probably a quart’s worth of florets on these three plants alone. My cabbage patch broccoli is also still [...]

To Grid or Not To Grid

Square foot gardening is the best way to maximize your garden’s growing potential. I’ve done it both with and without the help of grids like the one pictured above. Mel Bartholomew says that the grids are essential for utilizing every possible inch of space in your raised beds, and his web [...]