How To Grow And Harvest Lettuce Year Round In The UK - Harvesting Whole Heads And Heatwave Info

With even more hot weather due, our lettuces are more likely to bolt, so we're going to have a look at things we can do to avoid that happening. We're also going to have a look at how to harvest the entire head rather than the outside leaves, which is what we did last time, and then also think about our seedlings and whether or not we want to sow some more at this point. This is some of the seedlings that I have ready and waiting to go in now. So we've got a few options with these as they're going to experience some stress over the heat. The first thing we can do is make sure that they stay really well watered and that we just keep them quite damp. The other thing we can do is actually plant them into a shady spot and keep them really well watered again, and then we're going to be also thinking about looking at sowing some more seeds. We can find that lettuce really struggle to germinate over 30 Celsius, which it's definitely going to be here, so you could either sow some seeds if you want to right now and take them inside the house if your house is cool enough and you've got a spot that is in a window that's cool enough or that you've got some grow lights like I have, or you're just going to wait until the majority of this heat is over and then sow some and pop them into a shaded spot outside and they should be fine. Obviously if they're on the floor just keep an eye out for any slug or snail damage on the We do want to make sure that we keep up the succession of the sowings because if we stop now then they are going to start bolting and we're not going to have any for later in the summer. These are some of the earlier lettuces that we sowed, so this we've been harvesting the outside leaves but I am ready now to harvest the entire head. It hasn't bolted and it's looking really good actually. A little bit of nibbling and I have been removing any outer leaves that haven't been looking too good but it is time to take this one out because it's about to start actually bolting if I don't. To harvest it I'm just going to take a knife or you can use some scissors. I'm just going to take it down to the soil level and just cut through the stem. There we go, so that's a really good looking head here. I'm growing these organically so there is going to be pests and there's likely to be slugs in the actual layers but if you are growing in an area where it's completely out of the way of pests, which is very unlikely, then just popping it into a little bit of water and letting it sit in that water will be enough to keep it fresh for a good few days. Instead I'm just going to be removing all of the leaves individually and washing them and putting them into a pot just as we did last time. Then behind that one I've got a lella rotha and this one is starting to bolt so I'm going to take this one out as well. One of the ways in which we can tell that it's bolting is you can see that the stem is getting longer where the leaves are and it's not sitting low and although it'll be absolutely fine to be at this stage, if I left it longer then it's not going to be nice and it'll become really bitter. I'm just going to remove some of these outer leaves and actually just keep the centre. But before I do, one thing I've got all over mine is these ladybird larvae. So although they look really prehistoric and a bit scary, make sure that you do save any of these if you do find them. The other thing that we can find on our lettuce is actually leaf miner. I don't know if you can just make out the lines in this here. So this is a bug that actually lays in between the layers of the leaf and mines around and makes little track marks. You'll probably find the grub somewhere but other than not wanting to eat this, I'm just going to pop this into my hot compost. If you find the grub then you can squish the grub and pop it into your normal compost but we obviously don't want to eat it if we can avoid it. Next door to this I've got another Lolorosa that is just starting to actually bolt, although it's only just and just actually happening. But you can see it's much lower down. It's got one level of canopy and it's doing much better. Once again I'm going to harvest this. What I do is I give away the excess leaves to locals. So do give them away if you haven't got enough. But the other thing is if you are trying to stop your plant from bolting then it is better to continue harvesting the leaves and even if you've got to pop them in the compost we don't want to just let that lettuce sit and get bigger and bigger because it's going to encourage bolting. So yeah don't worry if you do need to pop them into the compost. Another thing we're going to see with bolting is the plant actually putting out these small little side shoots which are going to be between each of the leaves. This is just the plant basically getting ready to save seeds but we're not at the point of saving seeds with these plants. If you want to make sure that if you are going to save seeds we save them from plants that are really resistant to bolting. Once we have cut the stem it is possible that we're going to get some extra shoots and some extra growth that couldn't be eaten but if that's the problem for what you're going to plant in here next then you can just pull these out and pop them in the compost. All those plants were our earlier sowing so they are of course more mature more likely to run to seed so therefore harvesting them is our best bet if they're ready and you're ready to actually eat them. If however you've got plenty of younger plants then some of the things that we really want to look at here is making sure that they are kept damp during this heat wave and then also if you can provide shade that will help as well. If you are putting seedlings out then think about where they might get shade so if you've got some beans or something that are going to grow over an arch then planting the lettuce under the arch is really helpful as well. Once you have harvested from one area it is a good idea not to plant them straight away again after in the same area. One thing that I get if I do try and do that is root so it can just build up an issue with pests so if you are able to move them to a different area then that's definitely going to be worth doing as well. We did cover in the last video how to clean the lettuce up and then store them in the fridge to keep them fresh for as long as possible so let me know if you'd like the link for that or just head back to that video in the playlist but there's also plenty of time as we go into winter to join in with this grow along. It's pretty much a year-round grow along so if you do want to join in and you'd like to know the information on the varieties that we're growing and be linked in to all the first videos and everything then just comment newsletter and you can still do that as well.