The salad bed is thriving. Lettuces, onions, radishes are enjoying the cooler weather – so am I. Everything was fertilized this past weekend. Irrigation occurs about every other day. It’s so nice not to have to get up at dark:30 and irrigate. I was getting out there and misting everything around 5:30. Now an occasional watering using the drip line does the trick.
I’m harvesting the lettuce by pulling the lowest leaves as needed and allowing the rest of the plant to remain and grow. So far so good. As the onions are thinned they are chopped and used like chives. Since it freezes around here in December, this bed will be covered by a covered wagon type device with the hope that the lettuce and company will continue to provide salad throughout the winter.
A head of lettuce in the grocery store is ~$2. A packet of seeds cost slightly more at ~$2.50. Each packet contains ~250 seeds. At $0.01 a head for home grown nutritious lettuce it’s well worth growing your own. Sure there’s the costs of water, fertilizer, and the set up of your garden but the exercise, convenience, and freshness of the produce just might be…priceless.
