Lettuce planted in September, photographed moments before harvest on June 14
The saga of my bumper crop of overwintered spinach garnered yawns from some people around here. Yes, spinach plants are known for being able to survive a freeze, even of the polar variety, and come back in the spring, I was told. But lettuce? Has anyone heard of lettuce that survived a Northeastern winter — an unusually cold one, at that — and yielded a continuous harvest of leaves from April till halfway through June? Some of my fall lettuces did just that, under the same thin row cover and snow pack that blanketed my spinach crop. There were two survivors from a mix of leaf lettuces that I planted last September: a red oakleaf and curly red-leaf variety. The stems kept extending themselves but the plants never did bolt before I finally pulled them up on June 14, so the leaves were sweet to the end.
polar vortexes didn’t faze my oakleaf lettuce