Market Farming

[Windwalker <windwalker AT computer-services.com>]

Since lettuce has always been one of our trademark products (and favorites)
I am pleased to report that I cut lettuce yesterday from our hoop house that
has withstood 100º weather for a prolong period and is still highly edible
and equally as important beautiful.  The variety is rouge grenoblaise from
Pinetree Seeds.  In their catalog it say that it stands for 45 days without
bolting, which I took with a grain of salt but decided to try it anyway.  I
even cut one head that had started bolting and we ate it last night, no
bitterness.

Our hoop house has shade cloth on it which reduces the color development
somewhat but this lettuce has a beautiful iridescent quality about it and a
tinge of red.  Definitely worth a try.  I started these, redina (our
favorite) and vulcan (second favorite) on May 1 and transplanted them into
the hoop house on May 23.  I started cutting them around the middle of June
and had a steady supply of head lettuce for market until last week.  I could
have cut some but didn't thinking that from all the heat it was probably
bitter and not worth wasting time.  I'll see what I have to cut today.
Lettuce this late in July should be good for about $3 a head at our market.

These are the first Pinetree lettuce seeds I've used and the germination
isn't as good as Johnny's.  I actually tested redina from both sources and
Johnny's was quite a bit better for germination.  I don't know why that
would be.

joan vibert
ottawa, kansas