kay wrote in
:


David.WE.Roberts;985631 Wrote:
A week or so back I bought some Cos lettuce plants from a local
nursery.

They are growing well and fast in the 'raised bed' bags but so far
they

don't look like the picture on the label :-)

At the moment they are more like a leaf lettuce than a heart lettuce -
but
it looks as though the heart is beginning to develop.

If this carries on, I think I will have a lettuce heart and a more or
less
redundant ring of leaves around the base.

So when can I pick these outer leaves for an early crop without
compromising the forming of the heart?


My guess would be that the outer leaves will probably die. So I'd take
the view that I might as well get some goodness out of them before they
go yellow. On the other hand, the yellowing happens because the
"goodness" is being recycled back into the plant.

On a related topic- bought one of those fancy trays of "living
lettuce"
which had been reduced on the veg section of the supermarket. When we'd
finished it, I dumped it in the greenhouse and kept it watered; it's
now
coming back for its third cutting.

Since I don't have much space for veg, I don't worry about a constant
supply of lettuce (which is relatively cheap) and concentrate instead
on
other salad leaves, to make up the ingredients for a mixed green salad.
Although at the moment there's enough stuff as a by-product - the tiny
leaves on last year's chard which is now flowering are good, along with
yellow oregano and chives flowers.





Kay, I grow vegetables not for cheapness, but for the taste. It often
costs me more to grow them than to buy them. And I always, always feed
them.
It is the pests and diseases IMO that costs money to get rid of.
The cost of packet of seed is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of
compost, manure, tools, netting, chemicals, and the hours of weeding,
digging and actually sowing then cropping.
After all that, I still love my veg. garden and allotment.

Baz