Folks I've got to get some lettuce planted
Normally, I would like to have already had lettuce in the ground and about halfway along but we had such a late summer
Couldn't really start any in the greenhouse till it cooled down a little bit because that lettuce just won't germinate in those really hot soil temps.
So I
Finally got some started in the seed trays and I've got some ready to go in the ground today
So we're gonna plant some lettuce and we're gonna plant a lot of it. If this is your first time on our channel welcome
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It's always good to have you back. So here are our lettuce transplants that we've got to get in the ground today. We've got
six different varieties here a flat of each and
These look absolutely beautiful. Can't wait to get these on the ground. Let's go through what we have here
We've got this first tray here, which is a green butterhead
this is a variety called harmony
and all of these are varieties for which we have pelleted seeds for so they're really easy to singulate and
Plant in the seed trays the second one we have here is a variety called Cherokee. This is a red lettuce
Really good heat tolerant lettuce, it should do well for us this time of year as well
then we've got this variety and kind of spring crisp lettuce and
This one is called starfighter nice little green lettuce with in size leaves there
Then we've got some red butterhead. This is a variety called skyphos and I've been growing this probably
Longer than any of these varieties here one of my go-to lettuce varieties
I really really like this one just tastes amazing
and
Just has a really nice kind of silky leaf on it really good for sandwiches and salads.
Then we've got a romaine here. This is a variety called coastal star.
Everybody loves romaine lettuce make that great BLT with some good fresh
Romaine lettuce from the garden and then we've got one more
spring crisp variety here, and this is called Tehama and
Be my first year growing this one
But if the transplants are any indication, I think we're really gonna like it.
So now let's go over here and talk about where we're going to be planting all this lettuce
so
over here is where we had our fall sweet corn and our peaches and cream sweet corn that did just
Okay, we got a decent harvest nothing
that'll blow your mind and
We had that corn on drip tape you can see I've got the drip tape pulled up right there
So what we did after we harvested all this corn
is I came in here with my lawnmower and I just mowed those stalks down and
Then after I mowed them because I didn't want all
That crop debris left in there considering the fact that I was about to come in and plant something
Right behind it
If I was gonna leave the area I would've left that crop debris, but I wanted to kind of clean it up. So I raked
All of that corn debris over to the side there
Get it relatively cleaned up. I still got a little bit in the soil there shouldn't be a huge issue
so once I mowed those stalks and kind of raked out some of that debris
I was able to just to yank that drip tape right up so you can see here
We left it connected at the mainline
And we just ripped up that tape and then kind of piled it up here on the other side of the mainline
So we've got all seven rows of tape here and a lot of people always ask
Can you reuse the tape how do reuse how do you reuse it? And this is how we reuse it
We don't fold it up and store it. We'll just pull it up
Pull it back
Cultivate the area and put it right back down and plant something else
so after I had the tape pulled up I
Put some compost down there
tilled it in good and
We'll be ready to put that tape back down and plant some lettuce the way I'm going to put this tape back down
Is I'm gonna bury it just like I normally would with my drip tape layer
I'm gonna take my double wheel hoe with the
plows in the furrowing position and I'm gonna get lined up right where that row start is and
look down there and drive me a straight line to make me a furrow and
Then I'm gonna unfold that tape
Making sure I still have the emitters facing upwards in that furrow there. So lay it down in that furrow and
Then I'm just going to cover it up probably with my high arch because I've got some hilling plow set up on those
And will cover it up bury that tape and then we'll be ready to plant some lettuce.
So let me go get my wheel hoe and we'll get started here.
Alright, alright, alright, so we got this furrows made we got our tape laid down in it
We got our emitters
facing
upwards
and it just happen to work out really well because
We do a corn on a three-foot row spacing and we're gonna do lettuce
Double rows of lettuce on a three-foot row spacing so, you know, it's great when you can
Reuse your tape like this. All you got to do is pull it up put it back down makes it really easy
and before
We use our high arch wheel hoe with the plow set on the hilling position
To zip up these furrows and bury that tape
I want to show you a little trick but you make sure you'll do so if you'll notice down here
but this tape is flat and not inflated
See it's kind of bent up there
It's hard to pull it real tight. Now when you're using the drip tape layer attachment and putting it down for the first time
that spool is keeping it tight, but when you're just
Pulling up by hand here. It's hard to keep it tight. So what you want to do?
Is I'm going to come over here
I've got valves. I've got a valve running to this plot and
a valve running to my onion plot
Over here and so I've had this plot cut off
While I was watering my onions the last few days, but we're gonna cut it back on here and let that tape
Expand
if I can turn it the right way
And once that tape fills with water and expands it'll stretch on out
And you don't have to worry about it
turning over or flipping
When you're covering it with the high arch or the double wheel hoe or whatever you're using to cover it up with
So turn the tape on
Let it expand and stretch out and then zip them up like I'll show you right now.
Alright, so now we're ready to plant some lettuce we've got our drip tape buried here
Our plows on high arch wheel hoe give us two little furrows here
To do a double row, which is what we're going to do now
You could plant these in a single row right on top of the emitters if you wish
The double row just allows me to get more per row to kind of maximize the space in my garden here
So that's what I'm gonna do plant a row here and a row here and this one line of drip tape will feed
Both rows really nicely and once those lettuce plants grow up
They'll shade out this area and we won't have to worry about any weed pressure right here.
So how do you know when lettuce plants are ready to go in the ground?
Well when they pull right out of the tray just like that
We've got a nice little plug there and those guys are ready to grow in the ground
now when I'm planting these
You could plant them like I said on a single row you could put them right on top of the emitters on a 12
12 inch spacing
I found I can squeeze them in a little tighter.
So I like to plant them on about an 8-inch spacing and I'll stagger this row from this row
To get a nice even go of it here. So I'll put these about eight inches apart
Along one side of the tape here
And we don't have to cover them up too much and then on the second
Part of the double row. I'll put it in between
These two plants on this part of the double row, so I'll put one here
and I'll put one here and
Kind of stagger them along there
And give me a nice pace and give these heads plenty of room to fill out but also
Close enough. So when they do fill out, it could cover this whole area right here.
Well that took a minute but we got five rows five double rows of lettuce planted there
I held off on these two end rows here. So I had seven rows of drip tape put down
I think I'm gonna just bookend
This plot with radishes, plant some radishes on that end and on this other end over here. So we've got
Our Cherokee lettuce
Right here, and then we've got our Coastal Star
romaine
We've got our skyphos butterhead
We've got our Tehama
spring crisp
and then we've got our
harmony
green butter head, so we'll have
plenty plenty of lettuce from this plot here all different kinds and
Several different colors there and the good thing about growing lettuce this time of year
just like I was talking about on the previous video with the
Cabbage is that it holds well, so it's not going to bolt because the temperature is going to be fairly cool and
We don't have to harvest it all at one time. We can harvest a little bit at a time and it'll be just right.
Lettuce of all the things we transplant in the garden lettuce is probably one of the easiest
It just takes off pretty quick
There's not a whole lot of transplant shock
When it comes to lettuce as long as we run that drip and give it plenty of water initially
Usually takes off pretty quick another thing
I like about growing lettuce is we really don't have any pest problems with lettuce
I really don't spray it that often, now if I've got some leftover
Spray mixed up in the tank
I'll spray it on the lettuce
but I really don't have to spray it with anything unlike some of our brassicas and stuff where
We have worms or flea beetles or aphids eaten on them we really don't get any pests with the lettuce
So it's a really easy crop to grow as long as we keep it fed
Give it some nitrogen here
And there we'll do that through the drip tape and side dressing so much like beets and kohlrabi will succession plant lettuce
throughout the entire
cool growing season
So we planted some now and then we'll be growing lettuce on through early spring maybe even into late spring depending
On how warm it gets
Quickly, they're in April or so
So when we plant some lettuce in the ground like we did now
I'll go ahead and start some more in the greenhouse and it usually takes four or five weeks for it to get ready
so that way when this lettuce is
Getting ready to be harvested
I've got more going in the ground and we can have a steady supply lettuce all throughout these cooler months
I'll put some links below for our seed starting trays any of the tools
We used in this video and these pelleted lettuce varieties that we planted today.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video and if you did give us a big thumbs
up, a big like, and a big share and we'll see you next time.