If you want to create a small urban garden at home and enter the wonderful world of food planting, Სალათა This is a brilliant option. Although so far we have not grown anything. Cause: Lettuce (technically, lactuca sativa) It is easy to get, grows quickly and happily even in a small pot on the terrace.
As far as our space is concerned, there is no house where there is no place for one or two lettuce plants that will even grow happily. Living room in a pot, By a sunny window. The reward for this small effort is definitely worth it: if we start now, we can eat fresh lettuce leaves and other salads all summer long. And beyond.
Planting Lettuce at Home: What Pot Should I Use?
Lettuce is a beautiful and tasty plant; Which, moreover, requires very little of us even in the weeks and months in exchange for our food. And we only need a planter or pots to arrange one or two salads. They should not be too large: Lettuce leaves grow in small soils, its roots are short and melt to about 15 cm.
If you want the lettuce leaves to grow happily and put a few in one pot, it would be ideal to use an elongated planter and Leave a distance of about 15 or 20 centimeters between them: Approximately the width of a lettuce leaf. Or use a bag, the perfect container for urban space, as in winter we can fold it up and store it without taking up much space.
What he wants in a salad (like other plants). Grows on a good substrate Or agricultural land. If we do not have homemade compost, which is very easy to get from food waste, we can buy a bag of substrate or organically grown soil that will feed our hungry terrace salads throughout the season.
Lettuce leaves at home: sowing in the living room
If we like culinary adventure, Start lettuce plants from seed It has advantages. First, the price: for one euro we can get 800 organic lettuce seeds. In addition, lettuce varieties and species that can be planted in the sky: from bud-type options to trocadero-type lettuce leaves (lighter) or purple leaves, even reddish.
My advice is to start with our lettuce plants With seeds inside; Because they like heat, it makes them wake up more easily and in two or four days we can see their appearance. There is another reason: inside the house, the environment is more controlled and there is less risk of our little salad being eaten by snails or insects; Who enjoy the gentle taste of lettuce leaves as much as we do!
Is the easiest way Start with a four-inch pot, Full of land. Water three times (drain) and place three or four seeds in the ground, though we will keep one, the strongest. And cover with a little more substrate, without switching: a layer of lettuce seed thickness will suffice.
Even easier: if we use Small biodegradable pots, We can bury them as they are (without removing the lettuce leaf) in the final pot as soon as they grow. Or, if laziness bothers us, buy lettuce seedlings already grown in the nursery (small copies).
And since the lettuce plant will have four or five leaves, we can take it out on the terrace to place in the last place. Or leave it at home, by a sunny window, in a larger pot if we have no outdoor space.
The trick is to make the taste of your salad very sweet
Many varieties of lettuce grow quickly (prolong and think of throwing seeds, which is not convenient for us now) or bitter if left in the sun; Especially in summer if the sun is intense where we live. The trick is to make them taste sweet and get the best taste Partially shade them; Or place them under an awning that covers them for a while.
And enjoy a thin shading cloth or net: it will let out the sun, but without burning our precious lettuce leaves. Do this and water them when we can.
How to eat a salad all summer
There are two options here. We can sow once every two weeks and start the process all over again. Or, my option is to type the lettuce leaves by hand and, if required, instead of cutting the roots with a knife, eat the whole plant at once and leave a hole.
Picking leaves at the request allows us to keep the young lettuce plant and for months we can eat the same plant lettuce. Less work, more taste. Moreover, for a longer time.
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Source: El Diario
I’m an experienced news author and editor based in New York City. I specialize in covering healthcare news stories for Today Times Live, helping to keep readers informed on the latest developments related to the industry. I have a deep understanding of medical topics, including emerging treatments and drugs, the changing laws that regulate healthcare providers, and other matters that affect public health.
