Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Lettuce, Flowers and seeds

Lettuce are a filler crop that you can pretty much plant in any vacant spot in your vege garden that gets some reasonable sunlight.  They're easy to grow from seedlings....as always make sure you prepare the soil well with blood and bone and lots of nitrogen and just stick them in, water in with seaweed fertiliser (repeat that every two weeks I suggest) and then just harvest the leaves as you need to once they grow a bit.

I've grown lettuce successfully from seedlings and until a little while back it didn't even occur to me to grow them from seed.  Then I realised that if you let a lettuce go and dont pick it, you'll get a head of flowers and then behold! seeds!  Well it's taken a good 2 months but patience pays off....I have started harvesting the seeds of my lettuce flowers...I think it's a coral lettuce.  Its in the bottom left of the bed in the photo below


Here are a couple of close ups of the flower heads and the flowers and the seeds.  They have a nice small yellow flower and then it goes to a cotton type ball of fluff which the seeds attache to.  My method of getting the seeds is to pick the fluffy flow heads and hold the base of the flower where the seeds are and then pick off the fluff.  The i roll the flower in my fingers upside down over a paper envelope and the seeds fall out into that.  I sowed a few into some seed raising tubs tonight so will see how they go....









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