Getting the May garden in order
If I were smart, I'd mark
my calendar for a round of weeding and mulching two weeks after I put a
mass of seeds in the ground. Instead, I just play it by ear,
which means I freak out when the garden suddenly seems to be overrun
with weeds and in need of attention. Luckily, a few busy mornings
gets the beds back into shape.
Every plant needs
slightly different care. Slow-growers like carrots and onions
(from seed) really require two rounds of weeding before they're big
enough to mulch around, while most summer crops can be carefully mulched
just a week or two after emergence. At the other extreme,
close-planted lettuce beds often grow so quickly that they don't need to
be weeded at all. This year, though, our manure is chock full of
clover seeds, so I had to do a round of lettuce weeding, which is always
difficult and makes it look like a cyclone blew through the bed.
One rain later, though, the planting is once again vibrant and ready to
feed us half a gallon of leaves per day.
Speaking of rain, an inch or two on Saturday morning turned our tomato raised beds back into chinampas.
You can't really see the tomato plants in this picture, but a few are
already starting to bloom. Visions of plump, red fruits are
swimming through our heads, even as we anxiously wait for earlier crops
to ripen, like the first spring peas. This is definitely a good
time of year for dreamers!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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How many sq. ft. of lettuce do you plant to get 1/2 gal a day? And will this amount increase over time or is it stable because of picking small?
Thanks!!!!
Jayne --- Thank you! It was great to see you last week.
Terry --- I'd guess this is about 15 square feet. It's hard to measure lettuce picked --- I generally pick about a gallon a day, but it mashes down to about half a gallon once you put toppings on it. That's about how much you can pick from a bed this size and expect to be able to keep picking just as much daily until the lettuce turns bitter. I don't let the plants get any bigger than you see in the picture --- they keep getting haircuts, so they stay small. Using this method, you start eating when the plants are a month or less old and keep eating for about a month.
I'm jealous. I have lettuce envy.....We still have freezing temps here at night. 26 degrees on my front porch this am
We have to wait until Memorial Day to plant.