Winter Lettuce Harvest

My little winter garden has very recently become overrun with bugs. I pulled, washed and bagged a good 20 oz. of lettuce yesterday. I washed each leaf. I rinsed spinner after spinner of leaves. I've been neurotic about washing the lettuce ever since I had a bright green caterpillar rear up on it's back six legs looking for a way off my plate several weeks ago.

This week, the bugs have the upper hand. I've almost completely given up on the Regiment Spinach. I've grown it for years but I can't seem to get ahead of the bugs this winter. Every single plant has significant damage. I'm lucky if there is a third of each leaf left. I think I'll pull it all out and start again. Michael laughs at my idea of miniature row covers but it may just come to that.

Even without the spinach there was still plenty of variety to harvest and the resulting bags of lettuce looked very, very pretty. They include Forellenschluss, Cocarde, Parris Cos, Lolla Rossa, Red Sails, some sort of frilly leaf lettuce, some butterhead leaves, some dinosaur kale, swiss chard, sorrel, and a few side shoots of broccoli.

Red Sails Lettuce

Michael goes through a pound of salad every five days. That means I'll need to get the transplants in the ground soon if I'm going to keep up with him and I'll need to start more seeds. The garden is worth it just to keep the man in salad but it's a challenge and there are other things I'd like to grow as well. Tomatoes, for one. This will be the year that I can my first tomatoes. If anyone has any suggestions about which kind of tomatoes I should use, please don't be shy about letting me know. I'd like to use them for marinara sauce. 

This kind of garden dreaming makes me wish the rain would go away. You feel guilty making those kind of wishes living in Central Texas. It will stop in due time. And then, come July, all I'll want is a rainy afternoon.

Comments

[linniew]

Your lettuce is glorious! I love the kind with a pink blush like that. But aren't you lucky that the caterpillar didn't appear on, for example, your mother-in-law's plate at a family birthday dinner? That sort of thing is very awkward--trust me, I know.