Tag: Lettuce

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Tuesday DWC Harvest 12/10/2024

On Tuesday I work on the Deep Water Culture (DWC) bed. Today I have a 24 hole raft full of Monte Carlo Romain lettuce that I’m harvesting.

I’ll harvest the 12 largest heads for New Hope Ministries “Market” food pantry in Dillsburg. So people can come in and get a fresh head of lettuce. We’ve got kale, beets, collards, carrots, broccoli, and lettuce growing. It was warmer today – about 45° when I got up this morning and it’s been in the mid 50s in the greenhouse. The lettuce weighted 9 pounds, that’s 12 – 12 ounce heads!

Once in a while the DWC bed must be cleaned to remove the fine solid fish waste that collects in the bottom. It’s been 9 to 12 months since I did it the last time. Today I got this whole bucket full of very fine solid waste. I’m just gonna put it in my compost pile out back behind the greenhouse to let it break down.

I also cleaned the Infusinator nozzles Today to keep the air flowing into the DWC.

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First Lettuce Harvest of 2019

Johnny's Selected Seeds packet

I planted 36 TRUCHAS OG MTO seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds on 1/5/2019 in a 36 cell propagation tray using a 60%/40% mix of Coconut Coir/ Vermiculite as a planting media. I’ve found that these seeds germinated better without the use of a propagation mat (or heating pad) with an optimal surface temperature of 68 degrees fahrenheit (F). The sprouts began to appear after about 5 days.

After 11 days under the grow light for 14 hours per day I moved the seedlings into 2″ net pots in the 2-inch by 16-inch by 24-inch STYROFOAM XPS floating rafts. These plants grew well in my aquaponic system even though it was 55 days from rafting until harvest. The seed packet says 47 days to maturity but we only use Sunlight in our backyard greenhouse and the Winter days have been short. The temperature in the greenhouse typically stays above 40 degrees F during the night and can reach 85-90 degrees F during a sunny day.

It took me about 14 minutes to harvest 29 plants on 3/22/2019. (We had harvested 7 earlier for meals). The plants were dense and weighed about 4 ounces each. In total, the harvest produced 7 1/2 pounds of lettuce that filled 10 1-gallon bags.

  • Mini Red Ramaine lettuce
    Mini Red Romaine (Truchas OG MTO) Lactuca sativa
  • 9 one gallon bags of lettuce

After washing and bagging, I delivered 9 bags with three heads each to Tree of Life Ministries in Purcellville, VA for distribution to families the next day.

God Bless you! Thanks for reading.

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Lettuce Harvest 30 June 2017

Happy 4th of July!

Several people have asked for a tour of my greenhouse, so here is a more detailed walk through during my Friday morning harvest. This video is posted on YouTube here: