I decided to do a run of fall lettuce this season, as I often do. In the spring, I generally micromanage my lettuce habit — it’s an obsession, admittedly. I start the stuff indoors in seedling trays, meticulously selecting and transplanting the best tiny seedlings into individual cubes, nurturing them through a time in my rolling portable greenhouse, and then treating them like gold until the time comes to transplant outdoors.
I know, I know, all you winter sowers out there are rolling your eyes, mumbling “why does he do this to himself — sheesh, just toss some seeds in a milk jug and forget about it.” I get it. But humor me. This is a labor of love, honed for fifty years. One doesn’t easily give up on such hard-wired tendencies. They become part of you.
Fall? Not so much. The heck with all that labor of love nonsense — after a summer of lawn work, I’m ready to take it easy and watch football. So I generally just spruce up the soil in one of my box/beds with some compost (often a box that hosted an early, now-exhausted run of green beans), find a stray seed packet, toss some seeds in the box, and forget about it — winter sowing without the milk jugs. Fall sowing, if you will. And you should.
And so it was this year. I planted the stuff in the photo on September 9. Maybe ten minutes to accomplish the entire process as described. And then I forgot about it, except for the occasional watering, which was mostly by accident after noticing some sad plants while letting the dog roam.
Fast forward to late October, and it was decision time. These plants clearly wanted to live, and sub-freezing temperatures were forecast. So it was either let them pass in their prime or take action. And they just looked too healthy to abandon. Lacking time to do anything elaborate, I set up a little PVC support in the lettuce box, and just attached some plastic to the edges of the box with clothespins. I picked a bunch beforehand, soaking, drying and storing in the extra fridge (using those plastic leaf lettuce containers from the supermarket that I keep around — reuse, recycle, etc.) And that stuff kept surprisingly well.
Many cold nights have passed since the Great Covering. And I have to admit, I haven’t been paying much attention. Someday I will retire and pay attention. But that day doesn’t seem to be soon, or probably within my lifetime, so I shall not dream of such things (many thanks to the higher education system for making retirement unattainable for so many — but I will get off that soapbox quickly, as this is a gardening post).
Anyway, with a warmer day on tap (and, yes, a dog who wanted to go outside and sniff around mid morning), I thought I would pull back the plastic to assess. So I did.
As you can see, it is doing surprisingly well. A big part of the success — and the reason for this post — is timing. Timing of fall crops is partly good planning but mostly luck, as specific weather can vary considerably season to season. September 9 turned out to be perfect this year for direct-sowing lettuce. I could claim to be a genius, or I can admit that I was lucky. You decide.
What makes me say “perfect”? Well, it helps considerably if the plants are just starting to reach their youthful peak as the cold weather hits. This is when they are most interested in persevering through adversity. Younger plants do not have the leaf or stem mass to resist the cold. If they survive a cold night, they tend to just go into a kind of stasis, until the hard freezes of winter finally do them in. More mature plants are more difficult to cover, and the tops of the plants tend to suffer damage. These plants were the perfect size for extending the lettuce harvest well into December. Even if they don’t grow a whole lot more (the sun angle is getting iffy, and 60 degree days are becoming infrequent), they have produced enough for me to pick for at least a few more weeks. They are effectively existing in a perfect outdoor refrigerator. Except without any electricity bill. All I need to do is pin the cover to the box on cold nights. A small price to pay.
I talked a lot about timing this season, and I will continue to do so. It is one of the four pillars of successful gardening — the one that is too often neglected, and the one that often is very difficult to control. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.
And oh, by the way, here’s the aforementioned dog… She’s lucky she’s cute. But seriously, she is a wonderful little friend. And she loves green beans from the garden.