Offset rising lettuce prices, grow your own

As food prices continue to rise faster than the general rate of inflation, growing your own looks more and more appealing. Often food prices take a quick jump due to things that are beyond the control of farmers, most of the time it is weather related.

We can expect to see a rise in supermarket lettuce prices soon. The series of atmospheric rivers that dumped an abnormal amount of rain onto California caused major problems for lettuce and other produce farmers.

During the second week of March, excessive rain from one such atmospheric river caused the Salinas River to break through a levee in several places. This is significant for us because the Salinas Valley produces 80% of the nation’s vegetables during early spring to mid-summer.

The flooding not only destroyed lettuce growing in the fields, it will also end up delaying planting of the next crop, possibly for weeks.

With yield losses potentially approaching 50 percent, estimates are that lettuce prices will continue to be high into July.

As a gardener in Michigan, this would be good year to plant extra lettuce. Lettuce, leaf lettuce in particular, is a quick growing crop that can be harvested in as little as three to four weeks after seeding if picked in the “baby lettuce” stage.

Head lettuce types such as iceberg or Bibb take longer but still can be ready to pick after leaf lettuce is done growing.

Leaf lettuce can be harvested over and over, beginning with baby lettuce. Part of the crop can be left to grow larger so it may be harvested at a more mature size.

To ensure a long harvest of leaf lettuce, break off the outer leaves as you need them and leave the center of the plant to grow more leaves.

Another way to harvest is to cut entire plants a couple of inches above the surface of the soil. That ensures that the growing point is undamaged allowing the plant to regenerate new leaves for a second harvest.

Lettuce seed may be planted into directly into the garden once the soil temperature reaches 35-40 degrees. Or lettuce seed may be planted into containers earlier indoors and moved into the garden later as transplants. If you start seeds now, they will be ready to set out into your garden in as little as three weeks.

Lettuce seeds are small and require some sunlight to germinate so cover them with no more than an eighth- to a quarter-inch of soil. Pat down the soil gently so the seed makes good contact with soil particles and water regularly to keep the area moist but not soggy.

Leaf lettuce seed can be planted singly in rows at about 3 or 4 inches apart. Some gardeners like to sow their seeds into a band of about 3 inches wide. Additional bands are then planted a foot apart or so depending on how wide the gardener’s weeding tool is. Spread the seeds at a rate of about 20 seeds per square foot.

A nice crop of lettuce can be grown on an apartment balcony or porch in flat, shallow containers or boxes at a similar seeding rate. Just make sure your plants get at least four hours of sunlight.Ideally lettuce plants are thinned out so that eventually only six plants per square foot remain to grow to full size. Any thinned plants can be snipped off and used as baby greens. Snipping is better than pulling which can damage the remaining lettuce plants’ roots.

Leaf lettuce grows well during the spring months in Michigan. Eventually as warm weather arrives, lettuce quality will decline. The plants will send up seed stalks, a process called “bolting,” signaling the end of the lettuce crop.

Lettuce placed into the refrigerator immediately after harvesting may stay fresh for as long as three weeks, stretching your crop even further.

Growing your own means you’ll have plenty of lettuce to get through the upcoming shortage and maybe even have some to share.

Only about six weeks remain until Mother’s Day, the unofficial start of the main planting season. It marks the average day we normally start setting out frost-sensitive plants.