Garden Preparation - May

The excitement levels of backyard gardeners increasewith each passing day of May, but try to contain that excitement because a late heavy frost can dash your expectations throughout the month.  However, here are a few things you can do...

• Sow seeds for  cool hardy veggies in the garden; peas, beets, cabbage spinach, chard etc., but check the soil temp just in case. These fellows will deal with soils in the 50°F range, but don't let your excitement think that you can sneak in bean seeds much less set out those tomatoes and pepper plants you just bought from the big box store.

• If you already have set out cool hardy plants, then you might want to start checking for cutworms, slugs and even flea beetles. If your seeds have sprouted, think about thinning.

• Towards the end of this month, remember to move your seedlings out of the cellar during the daytime to harden them to the real world. Keep your eyes on the weather forecasts because you may not want to leave the plants out over night.  What you are really doing is exposing the plants to the spring breezes that will motivate them to streghten their stems.

• There's still time to start seeds for some of the warm weather lovers like cucumbers, melons and peppers indoors.  If you also starting lettuce, remember to keep it cool (under 70°F) and shaded - otherwise the seeds will stay dormant and not sprout.

Veggie History - Lettuce [Lacuca sativa]

Romain types were some of the earliest  varieties
  probably developed by the Eqyptians.

Botanists believe that lettuces, botanically part of the daisy family, Asteraceae, derives from a wild variety in Asia Minor and may have been first cultivated by the Egyptians and the farmers in Mesopotamia. The wild variety probably resembled celtuce - a stem type that we now think of as an Asian vegetable (commonly called: Chinese or asparagus lettuce), but it was likely introduced into China between 400 and 600 AD. The Greeks and  Romans liked the cultivars that the Egyptians had developed and added  lettuces to their menues. Eventually the Romans introduced lettuces to Britain. The Romans, of course, evacuated Britain, but the lettuces stayed.

Celtuce

• Celtuce is a great cool weather plant. You can start it indoors a month before the last frost or directly seed it into the ground. It is robust enough to sprout even when soil temperatures are just 40°F.  Space seeds 1" apart and thin to 8" spacing. Harvest when  plants reach 8-10", or you can let them to full size (about the size of a Brussel sprout),   full cooking.  If you want full size plants, spacing needs to be increased to 18."  Both leaves and stauks are editable.

In England the Elizabethans grew both a few head and leaf varieties, and  early New England colonists mention lettuce seeds in their diaries  as early as the 1630s. By the end of the 18th century in New England, "market gardeners" near coastal urban areas like Boston that offered  ready supplies of animal (as well as  seaweed) manures learned to grow lettuces and other seasonal crops on their southern slops to sell to city dwellers.   In Virginia Thomas Jefferson grew Dutch Red, a loose head variety, but like many gourmands of those times and earlier, he  preferred lettuce to be either boiled or sautéed.  Lettuce in salads was sometimes also eaten with simple vinegar dressings, but fresh salads remained restricted to upper class  menues until practically the end of the 19th century. Starting early in the 20th century lettuce in fresh salads spread around the globe.


And remember...

"The metaphor of the melting pot is unfortunate and misleading. A more accurate analogy would be a salad bowl, for,
 though the salad is an entity,  the lettuce can still be distinguished from the chicory, 
the tomatoes from the cabbage." -  Carl N. Degler