[GoodGilligan]

Hey Guys,

fintuckyfarms -

Nothing like having two jobs. One away from home and one at home. Well, I hope you get some time to start those seeds. Hopefully it works out better this time. Let us know how they turn out.

GPS -

I eat large salad myself, in fact I use a glass mixing bowl as a salad bowl (7 inches wide, and 3.5 inches tall), and stick all the goodies in my salad I can find in the fringe.

I even often make my own croutons from old bread I cut to crouton size, then let dry out on low in the toaster oven. Then I'll saute them lightly in butter (or margarine) and add seasonings to them (perhaps I might even add a spirits of olive oil as well). A salad dosen't get much better than that

You're making me hungry with all that descriptive food talk. I've still got a few weeks before anything can be harvested from my garden!!!

Lettuce plants are a cool weather crop, and even though it isn't the goal, lettuce plants flower and produce seeds. The weather/environment plays a big part in when the lettuce plants begin flowering. That's what is refers to as "bolting." Instead of being a nice round head of lettuce, when they bolt (begin to flower) they begin to grow tall (tripling in height, and even more). Basically when the weather gets too hot, the lettuce plants know they will die soon (in nature), so they begin to flower and produce seeds to reproduce.

Two questions. Firstly, considering that I live in South Florida and therefore I've decided to grow in a climate controlled house, will that delay the onset of bolting?

Secondly, how easy is it to get seed from lettuce and use it for the next planting? I would like to try harvesting seed at some point.

You can either harvest the lettuce heads as the whole plant (like they sell in stores), or you can just pluck leaves off the plant to eat as it grows throughout the plants whole life. But if you want to know how many heads you'll need to harvest weekly to feed your family, you really need to figure out how much your family eats to have a starting point (you know your family's habits better than anyone else would). Not everybody's eats the same size salad, especially kids that tend to eat much less than adults do.

Ya, I kinda figured that there would be no one correct answer when I first asked the question, but I figured a few people would provide their experience and get me closer to an understanding of possible yields. I've got seven loose leaf lettuce growing in the system now. And I've just started a whole bunch of romaine seeds to supplement the leaf lettuce. I figure once those are all up and running, I can start a regular seeding schudule to maintain a reasonable number of plants once I determine my own yield & usage.

Thanks guys, and I will keep you up to date with my progress.

GoodGilligan