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  • From: "Marlin Burkholder" <glenecofarm AT planetcomm.net>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Lettuce in April
  • Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 00:18:41 -0700

For a number of years I have tried unsucessfully to time my early lettuce plantings so that I would have saleable sized lettuce heads ready to harvest soon after the opening of our local farmers' market in early April.  My experience has always been that lettuce transplanted to the field in mid March here in our zone 6 climate finds it still too cold and will simply sit there in a state of dormancy until the weather is warm enough and only then will take off growing and come in around the middle of May.  We all know that any dumb fool can grow lettuce in May.  It is a fact that on several occasions I have found myself harvesting at the same time lettuce plants that were seeded a good month apart, the second direct seeded in the garden around the same time that I was setting out transplants of the first seeding.
 
This year I had several stretches of black plastic mulched ground that were left over from last year and still in fairly good shape so on a hunch I decided to plug lettuce plants into it in mid March and cover them with wire hoops and row cover.  My reasoning was that maybe I could make that lettuce think in mid March that it was late April and that it would go ahead and grow.   Last Saturday I took to market some of the nicest and cleanest lettuce I have ever grown (no rain-soil spatter, no slug damage, no magor weed battles) and despite it being a cold and ducky day I sold out. This was my first and resounding success to get lettuce to market in mid April.
 
Now come some interesting questions and observations:  The black plastic may make it too hot for lettuce as we move into May.  I've been thinking of pulling off the row cover soon but now I'm wondering if I wouldn't be ahead to leave it on because it may be shading enough to slightly moderate the heating effect of the black plastic.  If the row cover comes off, the black plastic should probably come off too, and I am reluctant to do that when I've got such clean and nice lettuce.  The other observation is the effect of the row covers on the red tinted varieties.  I planted four varieties: Red Sails (deep red leafy type), Regina di Maggio (slightly red tinted butterhead similar to Pirat), Ermosa (all green butterhead), and Lollo Rosa (red tinted frilly leafy type.  The Red Sails is coming off with about one half the red intensity of Red Sails without the row cover.  The Regina di Maggio (Italian butterhead) is coming off all green without the slight red coloring shown on the seed packet.  And (most interesting of all) the Lollo Rosa (from seed imported directly from Italy through Bill Mckay's "Seeds From Italy") is coming off with an intensely deep red color, much better colored than the Lollo Rosa strains I have gotten from American seed sourses in the past and grown without row covers.  This suggests to me that this Lollo Rosa strain may be a really good candidate for wintertime hoophouse growing conditions that would hold it's color well under low light conditions.  I already know that Lollo Rosa is among the most winter hardy lettuces I have ever grown and has on several occasions overwintered surprisingly well in this area outside with no protection.
 
Marlin Burkholder
Shenandoah Valley of Virginia



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