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Seed Saving Lettuce

By geekgardener, on October 20th, 2009%

Earlier I wrote about Seed starting Lettuce with many pictures of various steps involved. I couldn’t blog about the results actually. Anyway, it took almost 2 weeks for 50% of the lettuce to show up and the rest of the 50% never really showed up. I was really disappointed. I started questioning the way I started those seeds and did some tests by starting them in different ways. 1. Tried soaking them in water for few hours, a day. 2. Put them in moist tissue paper towel to see if i have luck there.. still the attempts were futile. The seeds were supposed to be “imported” and it didn’t expire either. So what went wrong?. While I was thinking just that, one of my friend gave me some seeds from France.  I immediately sowed them the same way I mentioned in my post. This time my expectation was low. After just 1.5 days I saw one of the seeds throwing out white small roots.. Wow. this is like Magic. The seeds were fresh and they germinated in no time. Many sources in the internet mention that the age of Lettuce seed is 2 years.

In those 50% seeds that germinated in my first batch, I let a few of them to flower. Lettuces were not very happy with Bangalore’s weather(they need much cooler temperatures around 20 C) and it was much hotter.They were happy to flower. When a plant is stressed, it starts to flower. It is very interesting actually. Plant thinks that it cannot live longer in that environment and prepares to continue its generation by flowering and seeding much quicker. Lettuce is no different in hot climates. It bolts quickly. Here in this post I will mention about saving lettuce seeds. Though it is advised not to save seeds from plants that flower prematurely.Vigorous plants should be selected and allowed to flower.  The process of seed saving remains the same.

Find a lettuce plant that is strong and vigorous and let it flower. In my case, the plant volunteered.

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The young flower that has just bloomed looked yellow in color for the variety I had. Once the flower matures, the seeds are formed. The seeds have a parachute like wing that helps it to fly. You can see that in the pic below.

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You can wait for the time where most of the flowers are burst open like the one above but not fallen off the plant, and then take the whole stalk of flower and collect individual flowers and separate the seeds out of them. MyGarden 706

I just collect few mature dry seeds from the plant daily as i water and keep adding to my seed packet. The above pic is dried seeds with their wings. I just gently rub them in palm and they become what looks like “Lettuce seeds!”

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And guess what, they germinated in two days!. Below is randomly sown lettuce seeds peeping in just two days!.

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Another reason why you should save your own seeds!.

gg

13 comments   gardening, lettuce, seed saving, vegetables   , , , , ,  

Seed starting Lettuce (Lactuca Sativa)

By geekgardener, on May 13th, 2009%

The harvests from your kitchen garden are always priceless though it is a vegetable thats available very cheap in stores outside; though you spent a lot on growing it than what its worth.. Though its available in plenty. But the Joy goes one level higher if you start growing something that you dont get outside easily and its very expensive. Yeah!!.. I am making my way towards the title of this post. “The Lettuce”.

Before we start on the techniques of it, a little primer. There are several varieties of Lettuce.

  1. Butterhead
  2. Chinese lettuce
  3. Crisphead/Iceberg
  4. Loose leaf
  5. Romaine/Cos

The ones that we get in the super market is mostly Iceberg. It has more water content, and is very crisp. But it is of very less nutritional value. There are other varieties of Lettuce that do have very high nutritional value. Those lettuce that have a mild flavor and pigmented leaves are rich in nutrients and Anti-oxidants.

What are the Cultivars that I sowed:

  1. Lolla Rosa [Loose leaf]
  2. Red Salad Bowl [Oakleaf Lettuce]
  3. Marvel of Four Seasons [ Butter head]
  4. Great Lakes 118.[Ice berg]

Though the varieties are different, the sowing technique remains the same. FYI, Lettuce belongs to the family Asteraceae ( Same as Sunflower, Daisy etc).

Seed starting:

Lettuce seeds look like this. The darker seeds are of “Red” colored leaves.

seeds

Step 1:

Fill your seedling tray with moist seed starting mix. Your seed starting mix must be free of any pathogens/fungi. Using a sterile seed starting mix will avoid “Damping-off”. Here I use washed Coco-peat/Coco-coir/Coir-pith. Its not soggy but moist.

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Step 2:

Take your dibber and make half centimeter pit in each cell of the seedling tray. An old toothbrush can be beheaded to make a dibber as in this picture.

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Step 3:

Sow the seeds two per hole. I sow two per hole. If you think one per hole is fine, goahead with one per hole. Once you have sown the seeds completely. Cover the seeds with little coco peat on all the cells. Sprinkle some water using a sprayer if the media is little dry. And important thing, If you are sowing more than one variety of the same veggie, then Label them.

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The seeds are sown in the following order from left to right: Great Lakes, Lolla Rossa, Red Salad Bowl, Marvel of Four seasons and the last row is not actually lettuce it is Cabbage ;-) . I had just 4 cultivars of lettuce.

More later

gg

28 comments   gardening, medium, propagation, seedstarting   , , , , , , , ,  
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