Mission Endure 66: Winter Lettuce Update at 2 Weeks

Two weeks ago I posted some photos of the winter lettuce we are growing. It is now 2 weeks later and I thought it would be a good time for an update.

The lettuce we were harvesting two weeks ago is still going strong. We harvest the mature leaves off of the lettuce twice a week and it has been keeping us in lettuce all week long. It is so nice to have dark green, flavorful lettuce even with the cold nights with weather below freezing. Normally our garden is done by now and we are having to rely on store-bought lettuce, which is neither very green or flavorful. You can see in the below photo that the lettuce we have been harvesting for the last month or so is still going strong and I think it will continue to provide us lettuce for another month. This is all Parris Island Cos and is a wonderful crisp romaine style lettuce.

The lettuce mixture we planted two weeks ago is starting to grow and I think in about 2 more weeks will be ready to start harvesting. I posted in our last Blog post the mixture of lettuce we planted. Here is what it looks like now

You can see the Black Seeded Simpson on the left, followed by the Mary Queen Butterhead in the back, the Parris Island Cos on the right, and the Flashy ButterGem in the front. They all appear to be growing quickly and I expect we will have a good harvest in a couple of weeks.

I also planted some new plants. I planted another 4 pots of lettuce with a mixture of the same 4 types as above, and added one pot each of Martino’s Roma Tomato, Craig’s Giant Peppers (Sweet), Jalapeno seeds from a mixture of 40 points of Jalapenos I bought at the Soulard Farmer’s Market, Cilantro, and Giant Basil. They are all shown below. Hopefully they will all take off and start growing quickly. I wanted to see what the results would be using these grow lights on plants other than lettuce. I have not had good luck growing tomatoes or peppers indoors so far.

I will check back in a couple of weeks down the road and we will compare how they are all doing.