hi everybody this is Noel at Petitti's in Oakland village and I wanted to talk
to you today about how easy it is to grow salad greens in small shallow
containers we have these ready to go at Petitti's but I wanted to show you
about harvesting them and talk about typical care because a lot of people
have questions about it at this time of year we're in spring it's early spring
it's very cold outside right now it's about 34 degrees so we're in the
greenhouse and with these lettuce bowls you see this full lettuce Bowl right
here this is an Italian garden mix so it has some red leaves some green leaf
lettuce there's some romaine in here there's some chicory and some other
things in here too and this is a really easy way to harvest your own salad now
these can go outside don't get me wrong we brought them into the greenhouse
today but they really can be outside like on a porch or patio or a deck
wherever is most convenient for you to harvest them they want to be cool so
they really do enjoy the cool temperatures out there right now and
normally what we do is we'll seed these in February usually mid to late February
inside if you want to grow your cold crops your greens your salad greens
outside start St. Patrick's Day that is usually like right around st. Patrick's
Day you can get your pots filled with soil seed starting soil if you want you
can start your plants outside and you'll be ready to go okay
they are looking for full Sun to part shade so your lettuces are one of the
few veggie families if you will that can tolerate a part shade condition and the
whole idea is we want to keep them cool as we go into the middle of summer or
the heat of summer they really appreciate that cool temperature so part
shades really good and also if you ever come across like a shade cloth that's
really good to put over them mid summer to keep them cool okay so
right now to harvest what you're looking for is you're looking for your leaf
lettuce to be about four inches tall okay so four inches tall is when
you want to start harvesting and you're going to cut about an inch above the
crown the the base of that plant don't cut below because you're gonna
remove some of the root system of it but if you cut an inch above guess what that
leaf lettuce will continue to produce for you so we're gonna go in you can do
leaf by leaf if you want to let's say it's just a salad for one you can just
snip some of the leaves again about an inch above and go ahead and harvest them
that way okay and then obviously rinse and then eat or you can take a big
handful okay and you can go one inch above the base
and just cut and you've got lots of salad greens that you can eat so easy to
do very very easy ideally what you'd want is you would want one container
that's pretty well full-grown and then in a week or two you'd start another
container so those plants would be maturing so this is a kale planter that
we have here and they're right at the right size because I'm going to go
through and I'll harvest and eat all this lettuce and then we can go through
and eat all the kale greens harvest out of here
same practice harvesting them at about four inches or so and then leaving that
inch above the crown and then we can go back and we can rotate back and forth
kale and Italian salad mix and it's just delicious okay you can also plant yours
at home like I said you can use a starter lettuce so these are available
starter lettuce plants I have Vulcan which is kind of a cool green and red
mix I have the All-Star leaf lettuce mix which is really neat with all the Reds
and the greens in it and I also have some escarole here which is one of
Angelo's favorites that's called Natasha escarole so again you can plant your own
containers they don't a lot of soil shallow bowls like we have
here maybe four or six inches of soil they'll be fine you can seed that
container if you want to seed an empty container with seed starting soil you
can seed the container one about every other week depending on how many
containers you want to grow but it all works out really really great growing
your own is such a great idea can get you outside you know I'm pretty
sunny days and you can also work on it inside the house too I'm not so sunny
days so really enjoy