"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

if you plant seed direct (whether in the garden or a pot) you will have
much more success too,

I didnt, I appeared to let them dry out too much.

right, regardless of where you plant them, you need to keep the seed nicely
moist until they've germinated & grown a little, naturally g

what i do with most seeds lately, is that after planting them & whatnot, put
some straw around (higher than the seed bed but not over the seeds,
obviously) & lay an aluminium fly screen over the top. this helps keep the
wind off, & provides a little shade as well. ime, they just do much better
from the protection. these i can water a bit less too. although with lettuce
you still probably want to check them 2x daily to be sure the soil is moist.

having said that, self-seeded lettuce thrives on all manner of ignoring it
completely, so there's that. the benefit of seed is that only the good ones
prosper. with transplants, you might just be coddling along a dud that's
never going to be a really sturdy plant. a dud grown from seed, you just
thin it out & keep only the big boisterous ones to reach maturity.


Only one batch germinated and needless to say the bloody birds got the lot
in one meal.

Got bird nets now, so that wont happen again.

But the net says that they wont germinate over 30C. Not clear what that
means,
whether its any time of the day over 30C or if the minimum temp is over
30C.

with lettuce in particular? probably a maximum (day) average. i'd say it
just means germination is very poor in hot weather. if it goes over 30 for
an hour it doesn't mean none of the seeds will ever germinate!! but you'd
certainly want to germinate them when it's a little cooler, or in a cooler
place. also, a 35 degree day is not necessarily unpleasant for a plant which
is shaded, so there's that.

also worth remembering most veg plants grow best (overall) in the 15-25
degree range, iirc, depending on the type of plant, because it's just the
way it is & they've been bred (e.g. in europe) to be that way. local
cultivars therefore have local advantage. (the cultivar australian yellow
leaf, which i don't think is particularly tasty alhtough it's not bad, is
definitely better for hot weather, i found. just as an example).

cooler areas, and often grown in shadehouses (or similar). but they're
not really a summer crop. other greens like mizuna are a better bet.

Can you use that on sandwitches ?

of course. and it grows all year round, it's extremely easy (unlike lettuce)
and prolific. nasturtium is another good one for summer (if you like peppery
leaves).

Yeah, mate of mine had some very decent ones but he's so slack that
he doesnt even know what variety they were. He did give me some,
and gave me some tomatoes at the same time, so it most likely would
have been late summer, but I didnt think to record when it was.

if they were iceberg-like, it would have been "great lakes". iceberg is a
commercial cultivar, i don't believe you can buy the seed freely (?). great
lakes is the non-commercial version.

He let them all go to seed and collected the seed, and tried to
plant the seeds this spring, but appears to have not kept them
we enough and didnt get any germination at all. Must ask him
if he has any seeds left, think he planted the lot. I could certainly
go to some trouble to germinate them like in the fridge etc if there are
some left.

if it was a hybrid, the seed may have been infertile, OR it could have been
a problem of another kind. it's not worth saving hybrid seed though - at
best it's not true to type (although you could get lucky & have plants which
are better than type although taht is unlikely) but they tend to have
fertility problems anyway. you want open-pollinated seed.

bolt too young, you've had soemthing from them.

So what about that 30C germination question ?

well, where i live it's not a hot climate. we get bursts of extreme heat
that last a week or so, but over summer there is plenty of time where its
well under 30 for things to germinate. our big problem this summer has been
dryness, rather than heat, & also the completely erratic nature of the
temperatures here can be a real problem.

you have to appreciate your own local weather and climate, & try to work
around that because you can't alter it. with experimenting, you'll find out
what types of things work well at your place & which things just don't ever
seem successful, and also which things you can coax into success by doing
things a little differently or at a different time of year.

i haven't worked out yet whether seasol/poo stew is a huge help to
lettuce or not, but it does seem to be anecdotally.

Havent tried that yet. Just used pelletised veg starter fertiliser
and when they grew fine, didnt bother with anything else.

blood & bone might be better. i use it a lot as my soil's pretty terrible.
manufactured fertilisers do nothing for the soil as they are water soluble
(so you don't get to keep it - any not taken by the plant immediately
leaches away & that's a problem) and are expensive.
good luck!
i still struggle with lettuce as i said, but it's getting much better & is
lots of fun when you really crack how to do something that hasn't worked out
in the past! we all have to keep learning all the time with this. plants
like silverbeet that are hopelessly easy are excellent too - but they don't
teach us anything like lettuce & your more contrary vegetables do. :-)
kylie