Seems that Northview and my Garden Records blog both turn up often in searches for growing lettuce indoors. (I don't have time this morning to lookie and linkie, but if you want to read former posts on the topic a quick blog search will find them.) I will briefly repeat what we have learned about the topic, so searchers don't have to search further when they land here..
To simplify things: You CAN grow lettuce indoors. Easily. Very, very easily. Just sow some seed in a flower pot or almost any other container (we have even used a Styrofoam cooler), keep it moist until it germinates and either put it in your sunniest window or under a grow light. You can cover the pot or container with a bit of plastic wrap to help keep things moist until the seeds start to grow. (It will consume a pretty good amount of water once it is growing well too.) Then just wait a few weeks and your crop will be ready to eat.
We started doing this a couple years ago, just as an experiment, and have eaten lettuce all winter ever since. Even though it is summer now, I am starting some in hanging baskets to give away. I think a handy basket of lettuce right next to the back door beats having to walk down to the garden every time you want a sandwich, even if you grow lettuce there too.
I grow all of mine, even in summer, in cut off plastic barrels, keeping it clean, relatively slug-free and sorta-kinda-half way out of reach of marauding bunnies
. I wish indoor lettuce searchers good luck and lots of lovely salad!
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8 comments:
What a neat idea. We ususally just enjoy lettuce from the garden in the spring before the heat starts.I've never thought about growing it indoors.
Tipper, we tried it just for fun a couple years ago and were so amazed by the results! We do have big, East facing windows that get a lot of sun, but the leaf lettuce mix we grow is just as vigorous inside than out and a lot cleaner. Then only hard part is actually getting any of it to the table, as we keep walking by and picking a leaf here and a leaf there....lol
That's a great idea! Who says farmers can't think outside the box. Always innovating, to make life a little better.
I can just see you guys acting like rabbits, nibbling here and there.
Nita, You would be amazed how nice the lettuce turns out...very clean and uniform..nothing in the house to bother it.
I would love to be able to do this. One cooler will supply the family for the whole winter? How many plants do you have in there? I better go visit that link! If only tomatoes would work that way.
Hi WR, I should be clear, it is leaf lettuce. If you ate a lot of salads you would need more than a cooler, but for sandwiches and to add to salad you can get quite a lot in a cooler. Or any other container for that matter. This winter I just used a large flower pot.
I'm going to try this! I found my way to your blog via google and I'm so happy you posted this thank you.
Also - to the commenter who wished tomatoes could grow this way - look for seeds of ultra tiny plant varieties like Red Robin (8" tall plants grow easily in my 6" wide plastic flower pots with a slight taper) - bear extremely prolifically, about 1" diameter tomatoes which are very sweet and flavorful -- and best of all they handle low light situations well. I grew mine outdoors in summer, but brought them in during fall and kept them going in a south window (that got cut off from sun after 3pm) until after the new year. If you have more sun, I think you could grow year round indoors. Also try Canary Yellow (same size but yellow) and I'm just trying another one called Patio Teacup Yellow. For larger tomatoes - with larger plants of about 18-24 inches tall - which will tolerate a medium sized pot (say 12" to whatever size you wish) go with one called Patio Tomato - a hyrbrid that produces about 6 to 8 ounce fruits - decent taste. Hope this helps someone!
Lynn, thanks so much for stopping by and for the good info on indoor tomatoes. We will have to try some this winter!
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