Plenty of water is also very important for producing healthy, tasty, good-quality lettuce. Lettuce prefers consistently moist, damp soil due to its shallow root system. Without enough water, lettuce develops a bitter flavor. Keep your lettuce happy by following a consistent watering schedule. As with most vegetable crops, water-logged soil should be avoided to prevent disease. The time when you harvest your lettuce crop plays a big part in flavor.
Once lettuce reaches its full size, it is ready for harvest. Young, tender leaves have the best flavor. Leave it for 10 minutes and then rinse thoroughly. If everything fails you can cook your lettuce instead of eating raw. Cooking helps remove bitterness in lettuce leaves. Also mixing lettuce with other sweeter leafy greens like spinach can reduce its bitterness. I hope this article has helped you in knowing about bitterness in lettuce leaves. For more information on how to grow lettuce read our earlier post.
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In the early spring when the weather is cool you can harvest lettuce just about any time of day. Once the temperatures start to rise the leaves will start tasting bitter no matter what type of lettuce you are growing. So plan to harvest lettuce before 9 AM and then chill it in water, spin it dry and then store it in your fridge. You can start picking the outer leaves just a few weeks after transplanting into your garden.
Continue to harvest the outer leaves every week while you let the smaller ones in the center to keep growing. This actually helps the plants to grow faster and produce more food then letting it just grow a single head. But the younger leaves taste sweeter then more mature leaves do. The easiest way is to plant in the natural shade cast by trees or buildings. The best location will be one that gets morning sun and afternoon shade.
This simple cloth can be hung over your plants to block some of the sunlight and heat. Watering often can help but remember to still water deeply as this will encourage the roots to go further down into the soil.
Then mulch around the plants to help the soil to stay evenly moist. The best way to start building soil health is to add good quality compost to your garden every year. This can be from your own compost pile or a local garden center. Some varieties have been developed to have more heat tolerance than others. These types are slower to bolt and will grow better in hot areas. These types will bolt quickly when hot weather arrives. Whereas buttercrunch, romaine, red sails, and ruby tolerate high temperatures much better and are slow to bolt.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Twitter. Visit my Amazon store to find all my favorite gardening, homesteading tools, and gadgets plus all of my printed garden books and journals! You can build some supports around your garden and use shade cloth to block some of the sun from the plants.
Different levels of shade cloth exist that you can buy depending on how much sun you want to block. Add an inch or two of compost to the top of your soil every fall to add back nutrients. Keep your soil covered with some type of mulch during the winter, such as shredded leaves, grass clippings, or wood chips.
As I already mentioned, keep your soil covered with mulch! This will block the sun, keep the roots of your plants cool, reduce evaporation and retain more moisture in your soil. This is especially important during a heat wave when plants need to be watered each day in the early morning or late evening.
As mentioned, lettuce is a cool weather crop, so it is naturally going to last longer in the spring and fall. I like to succession plant my lettuce so I always have a continuous crop. Every two to three weeks, we plant more lettuce from seed in a new container or spot in our garden. By the time one batch of lettuce bolts, we have another batch that is in the middle of its maturity and one that is just sprouting. The main picture at the top of this post is my own example of this in my garden!
It is unique from other grow towers with its efficient watering system. I just recently purchased this grow tower and will be using it this year!
I will be doing a full review of it at the end of the season.
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