The Modern Victory Garden

One of the many slang euphemisms for money is “Lettuce” - a reference to the green color of American paper currency.   If lettuce actually were money, I would be a wealthy person right now.                                          

I have always been able to grow decent lettuce crops on this property.   The combination of well-amended soil, and a climate that wants to be on the cool and damp side a large majority of the year - certainly makes crops like lettuce, spinach, celery, cabbages, and peas easier to grow.   This year however, has been even wetter and cooler for longer than is normal and the resulting abundance of lettuce has been a bit hard to keep up with.   I have been harvesting regularly from the main lettuce patch and from the container planting of Merlot lettuces for about six weeks now.   Our menu has been dominated by large lettuce salads for quite some time as a result.   However, after six weeks of steady cut and come again harvests, the patch was starting to show some indications it was getting ready to bolt to seed.   Rather than let the patch just wind down, I decided to do a hard harvest of the entire bed to ensure I got the maximum harvest from it possible while the crop was still in peak condition.   I had to work late last night, but I got home around 8 pm and was able to go ahead and harvest the bed thanks to the longer daylight hours of mid June.   The patch is now emptied of lettuces and will be amended and then planted up this coming weekend with another planting of carrots for the winter harvest.            

From this planting area, I harvested over 5 lbs of lettuces.                         

The lettuce was rinsed carefully, trimmed of any less than perfect leaves and then spun dry in my lettuce spinner. I then placed the clean and dry produce in a large gallon zip lock bag with a paper towel inside to help further reduce moisture.   I was quite aggressive about trimming away less than perfect leaves (which went on the compost pile) and yet still managed to get four very full bags of lettuce that went into the refrigerator.                                 

We will be eating on this lettuce for many days, but have no fear that once gone this is the last of the lettuces for us this summer.   I still have a large container of Merlot lettuces on the deck going strong, and I have another bed of lettuces that I direct seeded not long ago that is now ready to be harvested. 

While it actually may not be money, I feel rather rich with the large stash of cool “lettuce” residing in the kitchen vault (otherwise known as the fridge!).  

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener