Mesclun greens
2:52 PM Wed, Jun 20, 2007 | Permalink
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Mesclun greens are pretty simple to grow and deliver a gourmet salad in a relatively short time. The ones I grew this year featured seven different types that all grow together because all the seeds are packed together. It may be a little late to sow seeds now, as they really like the cooler weather. When you prune the larger leaves, the plant continues to put out leaves that can be pruned again and again (sometimes called-cut-and-come-again). This method will give you salads for a longer time. However the party’s over when the plants begin to produce seeds, making the lettuce a bit bitter. (Usually in the warmer weather) For further info on mesclun (which means “mixture” in French) check out http://www.ngb.org/gardening/fact_sheets/fact_details.cfm?factID=12 A friend saw the photos of the garden and suggested I say a bit about the mulch and the bricks lining it. We had a bunch of trees cut down in the dead of winter. The tree guys were in the heart of their off-season and gave us a great price and let us keep the wood chips. They’re good for mulch because they retain a lot of water and keep weeds down, as well as look better than bare ground. The bricks were just lying around the property from former walkways. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. Use what you have. The only drawback is that the types of lettuce were not mentioned on the seed package. I’ve identified as many as I could. If you know the names of any of the others, I’d love to hear from you. I’ve numbered them so you could refer to them easier. I hope you can help me out.
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Iceberg lettuce person here :-) but I'm going to piggyback on your post with a short musing about plant care or the oddness of life or something.
Awhile back I commented that I had had some portulaca growing in a container on my deck last year, and had spread their seeds in the container and was happy to see plants come up this year, part of my as little work and as little expense as possible gardening.
A lot of portulaca came up, but their stems are only about 2 inches long at this point, so I am beginning to have doubts as to whether they will mature enough to flower. If you're not familiar with portulaca, they have odd looking sort of succulent, thin stems with big bright flowers at the ends that look like "cactus flowers." The stems seem to need to be about 6 inches long to flower.
So, meanwhile I'm finally getting to clearing out a container about eight feet away where the apricot tree didn't make it thru the winter, and so that container has gotten no care, no watering, etc. for a couple of months. And what turns out to be hiding in there amidst the weeds? Three almost fully grown portulaca.
I think I must have inadvertantly transferred some seeds when I was digging around in all the containers last year, or maybe the birds or wind did.
This reminds me of when, a few years ago, out in California, after having seen The Sound of Music for the umpty umpt time on television, I decided to grow edelweiss. I hovered over them in a garden bed and they eventually petered out. A few months later, I found an edelweiss growing in a crack in the concrete in the driveway.
These are both drought tolerant plants, so I guess they really aren't kidding about not liking water.
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Number 7 looks allot like red leaf lettuce from what i can tell.
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