Lettuce Start the Growing Season

It usually takes me a few days to a week to get used to the changes in the light caused by the start of Daylight Savings Time. Just as the light started waking me at 6:30 am, we changed the clock ahead and now I am back to rising after 7am, or in the dark before then. Now the daylight lasts until close to 7pm, which would be great if I was doing things outside, such as working in the garden. However, despite one or two days of above-average temperatures, it has generally been too cold to do any work outside aside from adding to my brush pile.

Optimism (Margo D. Beller)

And yet, going to the local Agway to replenish my seed and suet supplies, I bought a package of lettuce seeds.

I grew lettuce in a planter years ago and it did rather well considering I planted it at the wrong time of year. But the other year I tried again at the right time of year and the seeds did not germinate. I have since learned lettuce seeds have a short shelf life.

But I wanted to try again. I was tired of paying a lot of money for organic lettuce sold by a local farmer (using a protective tent) at the winter farm market this past season or buying less-than-satisfactory lettuce from who-knows-where at the supermarket. MH will eat lettuce on his sandwiches and it is another good way of getting him to eat greens. The cost of a package of seeds is cheaper than buying seedlings, even if not all the planted seeds germinate.

Lettuce, I am told in my reference books, is one of the easiest plants to grow. You can get two crops - planted in early spring, it grows into the summer; planted in late summer, it grows into the early winter. Lettuce likes the cold.

Nowadays I like trying to plant things as a way of coping with an over-mechanized and -technical society. If successful, I grow food. If not, I learn what not to do for next time. If successful growing lettuce, I may try other crops that cost a lot to buy at the farm markets such as chard and spinach.

Mainly I am feeling the itch to get my hands dirty. Although the thought of the spring cleanup work I'll have to do tires me, seeing the daffodils and other early bloomers poking their noses above the soil gives me incentive to make them more visible. I want to finally put the pepper pots back outside. I want to plant the dahlias I've stored in the garage.

I want the warmer weather so I can use those longer daylight hours productively, working in the garden and looking for birds. Soon enough the migrants will be passing through on their way north.

My brother-in-law in NH is waiting for the sap to start rising in his maples so he can start on this year's sugaring. I notice the maples in my yard have begun flowering, putting red coloring against the blue sky. Maybe the sap is starting to rise in me, too.