Is this an exciting lettuce? This is an F2 population of Jericho Romaine lettuce crossed with Deer Tongue lettuce. What that means is that last year, I found one strange plant in our Jericho lettuce planting. In this case strange meant that it looked different from the other plants. And it didn”t look like any … More Jericho x Deer Tongue lettuce breeding
Veg grower: “Let’s hurry up and cut those leaves before that lettuce bolts.” Seed grower: “Will that lettuce ever bolt? Then we can cut those leaves. Oh, and also get seed.” 🥬 🥬 🥬 🥬 🥬 We strip the bottom leaves off the lettuce plants to improve ventilation and reduce the chance of lettuce seed … More Veg growers vs seed growers – lettuce
Frank Morton is a seed grower outside of Philomath, Oregon. Frank runs Wild Garden Seeds with his wife Karen and the help of Victor Sauvie and Mark Luterra. They sell seed retail through a print catalog and online store, and sell seed wholesale to seed companies. We had a pretty long conversation so I’ve broken … More The seed growers podcast episode 7 – Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed
What are good beginner crops for seed saving on your farm? Choose crops that won’t easily cross with each other. This definitely means crops that mostly self pollinate (selfers). But you can also save seed from crops that mostly cross pollinate (crossers) as long as you only have one variety of a species in flower. … More What are good beginner crops for seed saving on your farm?
There are a lot of ways that lettuce can turn into jelly. A long list of fuzzy moldy slimy diseases. And they can strike seemingly overnight. One morning you have a bed of tall romaine lettuce looking perfect for harvest. And the next day … not so perfect 🥬 🥬 🥬 🥬 🥬 I’m going … More Keeping Your Lettuce From Turning Into Jelly
Lettuce is another good candidate for #seedsavingformarketgrowers It needs NO isolation distance. That’s right, lettuce is a SUPER SELFER. It is exceptional to see any crossing in lettuce. Even if the plants are grown side by side. And pretty much all the lettuce varieties you use are open pollinated. I don’t know of any hybrid … More Lettuce – The Seed Saving Super Selfer
There are two things you can do with a lettuce seed crop that is covered in mature seeds decorated with little fluffies: #1. Come in with a bin, or bucket, or paper bag. Lean the plant into the container and shake the the plant to collect all the ripe seed. Next week, same time, come … More Two ways to harvest lettuce for seed
Earlier in the year, I wrote about how we evaluate Tomato varieties with easy trials. Our lettuce trials are even simpler! Trial Goal I wanted small dense lettuce heads that didn’t take too much space in the garden but gave fantastic salads! That doesn’t seem like too much to ask for. We went through seed … More Evaluating Quick Lettuce Trials
Last night Tourne-Sol farm was featured on the TV show Les fermiers on Unis tv! Les fermiers is a show about what it’s like to be a farmer. The show follows Jean-Martin Fortier and the crew at la Ferme des Quatre-Temps through 2 growing seasons. During this episode I walked Annie-Claude and Justine around the … More Watch Tourne-Sol on Les fermiers TV show!
Lettuce is the other seeed crop that took me years to learn how to clean well (radishes being the first). The basics are like other dry seeded crops (thresh, screen and winnow ad nauseam) but to do a good job I’ve had to pay a lot of attention to the threshing and final screening. (If … More Cleaning Lettuce Seed
Going to Seed with Dan Brisebois 