Buttercrunch Lettuce

2024-01-14 Adults

For the last few years, I have been very interested in starting a garden and growing my own vegetables. Last year I bought a few Birdies garden beds from Epic Gardening and quickly realized that it would not be a walk in the park. I filled one of them with several bags of soil from my local Ace Hardware and threw a mix of wild flower seeds that are native to my area in the Mid-Atlantic. I was surprised by my success, but also shocked by the amount of soil needed to fill one garden bed. The wildflower were pretty self-sufficient, but I knew taking care of a few beds of vegetables would be significantly more challenging.

This year I set up a seed starting system using a heavy-duty wire shelf from HDX, some Barrina grow lights, and 6-cell seed starting trays from Epic gardening. I added a mix of worm castings, vermiculite, and organic seed starting to each cell of the seed starting trays and placed 5-6 buttercrunch lettuce seeds from Botanical Interests. 5-6 seeds is more than the recommended 3, but these seeds were meant to be sowed in 2023, so I wanted to account for lower germination rates. The seeds were soaked with water using a misting spray bottle to avoid causing the seeds to sink into the soil. Translucent germination and bottom trays from Epic Gardening were placed around each 6-cell seed starting tray and all the trays were placed in a larger universal bottom tray that can fit 12 6-cell trays. The domes trap moisture around the seeds to improve germination speed and rates.

The first seeds started sprouting today.

I put way more seeds in each cell than the recommended amount to increase my chances of getting a good crop because they were intended for the previous growing season. It turned out that the seeds were very resilient because there are a lot of sprouts. I thinned them out to 2-3 plants per cell.

After a strong start, the seedlings seems to be slowing down. They haven’t grown much, and they are pale yellow instead of green. Some are doing better than others. I am not sure why, but my hunch is their positioning under the rows of grow lights, the soil composition, and moisture content has something to do with it.

The first batch of buttercrunch lettuce seeds that I started on January 14, 2024, has been struggling. I’m guessing that it’s due to poor lighting, so I tried adding two extra grow lights, moving the lights closer to the plants, and extending the light schedule from 7AM-10PM to 6AM-12AM. This helped a little, but I was losing a lot of seedlings. I started putting them outside now that it is getting warmer, and they are looking much better. They were given 1 hour of direct sunlight the first day and each day they were given an additional hour every day after until. They were placed in the shade once they reached their direct sunlight allotment for the day. I’m still losing a few of the smaller seedling, but I think this is mostly due to insufficient watering. The larger ones are benefitting the most.

The roots of the seedlings have been protruding from the bottom of their seed trays for some time now, which can be a sign that they are ready to be potted up. I decided made a batch of seed starting soil by mixing coconut coir, perlite, some worm castings, vermiculite, and azomite, and compost from my Lomi and filled four 5 inch potting containers. I potted the healthiest looking plants into these containers.

A few more plants were moved into 5 inch potting containers filled with my homemade potting soil.

I think the seedlings are too small for the 5" pots and the soil is too dense. I’m moving them back to their seedling trays and using a looser soil mix.

Some of the plants were beginning to look weak and some even shrivled up and died. Their soil was soaked from leaving them outside overnight in the rain, so I decided to plant them in a raised garden bed since they looked ready and would likely need fresh soild that wasn’t too damp.

The plants transplanted into the garden bed look like they’ve grown a bit, but nothing substantial. There were a few that I could not fit in the bed, and they died, possibly from a combination of drying out and growing too big for their seedling trays.

I fertilized the plants using organic plant for edibles from Back to the Roots. I soaked 1 Tbsp in a cup of water, let it soak for a few minutes, stirred it, then pours a small amount on the soil surrounding the plants.

Because it worked so well for the 2024/03/17 batches of romaine lettuce and buttercrunch lettuce, I gave the garden bed a thorough soak and added some liquid fertilizer from Back to the Roots.

There were a lot of tiny elongated black bugs crawling on the lettuce leaves and inside the lettuce heads. I sprayed them liberally with Captain Jacks ready to use neem oil. It was overcast, which is ideal for applying the spray so you don’t cause the plant to burn. Don’t apply neem oil in direct sunlight.

The neem oil solution was not effective in getting rid of the tiny black bugs. There seemed to be even more today. I think they are fly larvae. They are all over the soil and swarms of them are collecting around the leaves that are drooping onto the ground. The recent rain and damp soil conditions would be an excellent breeding ground for gnats and flies.

I made a solution of dish soap and water. It contained about 2 teaspoons per pint of warm water. I poured the solution all over the plants and soil.

The tiny bugs were gone when I checked later in the day.

The temperature is getting to hot for lettuce plants, so I built some shade for them using bamboo stakes and landscaping cloth. It’s not pretty, but it will have to do until I can construct something more permanent.

Unfortunately, it looks like some flower buds are developing near the top of the plants and their stalks are becoming longer. This is a sign of bolting, which will cause the plants to become bitter as they spend most of their energy on growing flowers.

I decided to harvest the buttercrunch lettuce, along with the 2024-03-17 batch of plants before more of them begin to bolt. The average temperature during the day is well into the 80’s (degrees Fahrenheit) and that is too hot for lettuce, unless you want it to transition to its flowering stage.

I ended up washing it way too much, out of an abundance of caution, which caused it to wilt, but it was still edible. It wasn’t too bitter and it made a really nice salad with a lemony dressing for breakfast.