Daylight hours get longer: Lettuces Grow

It’s early February.  What’s the significance for a grower in the Northeast?  Stagnant overwintering plants begin to start the growing process again.  Daylight hours are getting long enough for plants to resume photosynthesis.  And now that the ladybugs have cleared the field of aphids, we were ready to transplant.

We seeded these lettuces in mid January, grew them in soil blocks with McEnroe’s organic potting soil, heating mats and indoor growing lights.  About 4 weeks later they were ready to be planted in the unheated greenhouse which can geothermally regulate itself and never get under 45 degrees even when it’s in the single digits outside.

Check out the nice root growth and easy tranplantation of soil blocks

I seeded a blend of mildew resistant varieties: Sulu, Baronet, Antago, Blackhawk, Defender, Garrison and Annapolis.  I also used a mix from Hudson Valley Seed Library that produces beautiful striking greens.  All seeds were innoculated with a mycorrhizal seed mix made especially for seed to help growth.

Rotation considerations: Lettuces can follow anything.  We had peppers growing in this bed in the summer and early fall.  We let it lay fallow for at least 4 weeks and added an aged animal manure  two weeks ago from Turkana Farms from Germantown, New York.

I expect this bed measuring 2.5‘ x 5’ to easily produce 10 lbs of lettuce by the time we rotate the next summer crop in.

 Look what we have to look forward to!