Saturday, October 20, 2012

Our Lettuce Experiment


We've been living in our current home since July (so almost 4 months).  I was super excited when we moved in because there are two HUGE garden planting areas.  One is in the front, and one stretches across the back fence.  

We moved in and got all settled, and then I quickly realized...they were in the shade!  Super sad face.  You see, we have these huge trees that provide lots of shade in our backyard.  That's really nice of course, but when it comes to planting, it's definitely not ideal.  The angle of the house prevents the front box from being the sun, too.  And so I got to work making myself a planter box for some plants I'd been growing in pots.  

After about a month in the house, I had this idea.  "Let's just plant all the seeds we had still in those planter boxes and see what happens".  The girls and Aaron were more than excited to dig in the dirt and help me clean up the space.  We planted all sorts of things and then waited to see what would happen.

Now remember, the space in front of my house does not see an ounce of light all day.  And guess what happened?  Stuff totally grew!  I've never had luck with lettuce (too hot here in the summer), but it seems as though the shade cooled it off just enough to allow it to flourish!  The zuccini did very well, however it did not produce any fruit by the time it froze last night (it did flower though!).  Carrots also did great in the shade (but still too small since we planted so late).

My conclusion:  Certain plants do excellent in the shade!  Next year that planting space will be filled with lettuce and carrots!  I can't believe stuff grew there, but it did!  And now I have a bowl of lettuce for salads this week ;)  

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