Perfect days to plant more lettuce

Pushing the limits and testing to see in what weather any crop can be grown in is very important to do but each crop has its ideal weather when it grows best.

For lettuce right now is the ideal weather with temperatures in the high-70s which is slightly higher but very similar to the weather in Salinas where around 60 percent of the nation’s lettuce is grown.

We don’t wait to plant the lettuce until now because it will take a lot longer to grow with the shorter amount of and we try to have lettuce for as much of the year as the weather allows.

Right now the lettuce is less stresses because of it not being too hot so all the energy of the plants can be focused on growing a delicious head of lettuce. Earlier in the fall each plant has to put some of its energy towards handling the heat and the remaining to growing.

The last two days we’ve planted a few beds of lettuce each morning before moving on to other tasks while the lettuce gets watered.

The earliest plantings of lettuce were smaller amounts while these ones are much larger because it will take much more time for the lettuce to grow now and hopefully it will be ready to harvest for a month instead of two weeks for the earliest fall lettuce.

Last Thursday and Friday it was very windy on the farm which was a big signal of the change of season with the summer weather being pushed away by the wind as the fall weather rolls in.

As it starts to feel like fall there is lots of cleanup tasks to do of the summer crops including pulling up the drip tape from the okra, melons, summer squash and cucumbers.

We are still harvesting the last few cucumbers but once they are done we will get them mowed and then in the coming weeks plant a cover crop in those beds.

A few of those beds will not be put in cover crop, instead be planted with lettuce so we have to spread compost on them to prepare them for the lettuce that will overwinter there.

We’re inching closer to being able to harvest some of our new crops we are now leasing, as most of the paperwork has been finished, and one of them needs a label, so we got that approved.