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market-farming - RE: [Market-farming] germinating lettuce

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  • From: Matt Cheselka <cheselka AT theriver.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] germinating lettuce
  • Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 16:25:28 -0700 (MST)

On Thu, 6 May 2004, Marie Kamphefner wrote:

> OK, it's just that I've had them sowed in the flats for several days now
> and they're not up. I didn't cover them and they're in the hoop house.
> It is SOOOOO hot here! I thought maybe it was too warm.
>
> Marie in Missouri

Marie,

'The New Seed Starters Handbook' by Nancy Bubel has some very useful and
interesting data concerning germination time vs temperatures. I've found
this info to match my experience. Here is the data for Lettuce:

32F 49.0 days
41F 14.9 days
50F 7.0 days
59F 3.9 days
68F 2.6 days
77F 2.2 days
86F 2.6 days
95F 0.0 days (does not germinate)
104F 0.0 days (does not germinate)

All of my lettuces have sprouted in 2 days like clockwork mainly becuase
they're all kept in the house which in the wintertime is about 60F and in
the summertime about 80F. Notice that above 90F or so, you'll get no
germination. As soon as they're up, though, they're outside with the rest
of the babies. So if your hoophouse is in the 90's, that's your problem.
Lettuce is happiest in the 70s. The biggest "problem" I have is fairly
low germination percentages -- about 25% of the seeds never germinate.
This does seem to depend on the kind of lettuce, with the green leaf being
worse (25% - 50% failure) and red leaf lettuce being the best (0% - 5%
failure).

Just as an anecdotal aside: One set of my lettuces DIDN'T sprout in 2
days, and became very alarmed (after several months of clockwork
germination, one get's to *expect* certain things! HA!). I waited a few
more days and then realized something was wrong. So, I tossed the lot of
them and thoroughly cleaned out my seed-starting apparatus. I used bleach
and water mixed about 1:10. The next set of lettuce seedlings popped up
as expected in 2 days. Yehaw! Lesson: CLEANING WORKS!

Happy sprouting!

Matt Cheselka
Cosmic Lettuce





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