By anonymous
Lettuce de Gisette glog
Submitted on Sun, 2008/12/07 - 12:59am
Last updated on Sun, 2008/12/07 - 8:28pm
Posted in
12.7.08 - just planted a new lettuce garden from Gisette seeds she so graciously sent. I had Evergreen Seeds Korean red curl and Burpee toy choi growing in Rapid Rooter outriders since 11.19. I did some serious trimming of the RRs to fit them in an AG pod and hope I didn't do fatal damage to roots. They are looking better after just a few hours, though. The others, planted in the new peat pods are:
Evergreen Seeds Hybrid Bimitas
Burpee Simpson Elite
Evergreen Seeds Fragrant Choi
Burpee heatwave lettuce blend
Burpee toy choi (just in case)
Sun, 2008/12/07 - 9:02pm
#2
FWIW, this was the 3-week point first harvest for my latest mini lettuce. Back left is heatwave mix romaines, back right Simpson elite. The front is tendergreen mustard. I don't think I sent you any of that.
Sun, 2008/12/07 - 9:16pm
#3
Not possible without you, thanks! I used a 50/50 mix of Peat's grow mix and 6.0 PH water with a 1.0 EC. They're slowly adding river water to our taps and I never know what I'll get. I mixed up a batch of bloom and grow yesterday and had to add about 15% more nutes and my 2ml/gal of PH down now goes to 6.0 now instead of 6.3 like it did for months. It's gonna be interesting.
Was worried about stories I'd heard about water not hitting the peat pods but all mine are doing well.
Edit... Wow, that's pretty. I haven't seen anything growing yet and it's been hours!
Sun, 2008/12/07 - 9:19pm
#4
LOL! Hours, eh? Give it 24, I'm sure you'll see some action by then. 
Water not hitting peat pods? 
BTW, on the peat pods, do you soak them first and then add the seeds, or just add seeds and let the Aerogarden wet them? Mine came with the old manual (that went with the sponges). So I just assumed I had to reconstitute them first. Though given a while in the AG pump flow, it'll do it anyway...
Mon, 2008/12/08 - 1:52pm
#5
Maybe I was thinking of AG6 pods in a 7, some little synapse fired and I remembered someone saying they had to tilt the pod slightly. I put them in the AG dry and watched them for a while to make sure all were functioning, they do swell up a little, don't they? All the red curl looks like it will make it, one of the three toy chois looks to be on life support, tho.
Mon, 2008/12/08 - 4:54pm
#6
Ah. Yes, the dry peat pods swell a bit as they reconstitute.
Eh, two toy chois in a pod isn't so bad. Any of the seeds sprouting yet?
Mon, 2008/12/08 - 6:06pm
#7
I remembered someone saying they had to tilt the pod slightly
That may have been me, I have tried the AG6 pods in my Classic (one is currently growing my cucumber), and the end ones do need to be tilted. The Classic bowl slopes away and impedes the end two, all the rest are fine.
Are you using all three GH nutes to start or only the grow & bloom - you only mentioned the last two?
I have grown lettuce on a number of occasions using our nutes, if you want all the dosages and EC levels then just ask and I'll write them out. You can use these as guidance or experiment around as you see fit.
Tue, 2008/12/09 - 10:40am
#8
I'd love to have your mixes, Peat. Sorry for the confusion, I was referring to your grow & bloom mixes. The Simpson Elite and heatwave is showing this morning and a couple others seem to be doing something! Have a Dr's appt. in a bit so back later, I just had to share!
Tue, 2008/12/09 - 12:31pm
#9
No problems, here we go then...
As usual, all these quantities are per 3.2 litres - you will need to dilute down to the EC as necessary. I use hardwater micro, the EC is different to your normal micro (yours will run higher) so you will have to add much more water to dilute than me, oh, the pH was around 6.3 or as close to this as possible.
Week 0 - starting week
Seedling Mix - Flora Micro 2.1ml, Flora Grow 2.1ml, Flora Bloom 2.1ml, EC 0.8
Week 1
Mild Growth - Flora Micro 4.2ml, Flora Grow 8.5ml, Flora Bloom 4.2ml, EC 1.6
Week 2 onwards
Growth - Flora Micro 6.3ml, Flora Grow 10.6ml, Flora Bloom 2.1ml, EC 1.7
Keep feeding for the week two formula all the time after this, you don't need to do anymore phases as you are only growing lettuce. I usually dump the water every two weeks and fill up with a fresh batch. It's your call what you do in the interim week, either top-up with water or leftover nutrients; it depends on how your EC/pH is doing, you know what to do. 
I have grown the AG salad kit with these mixes and also many other different types of lettuce with success. Infact, I start everything off with the same formula (cherry tomatoes, strawberries, cucumber, lettuce), I only adjust the EC for the plant type.
Five weeks of growth, I'm expecting the same from you. 
OK, I was cheating a little, this is my aerated one...
Tue, 2008/12/09 - 5:19pm
#10
Thanks Peat. I'm fairly close, I used a 50/50 mix of your week 2 (growth) forumula and plain water so should have about 3.2 micro, 5.4 grow and 1.0 bloom and the EC level is 1.0. Think that's close enough, things are starting to grow? I'll add some bloom when it needs topping off, that doesn't seem to change the EC much. I can stick a straw in it and Maere and I can blow when we walk by, giving it a little aeration plus CO2. 
Old age and treachery beats youth and ambition anytime. And, bringing out my lazy side it looks like if I just top it off with the grow mix it'll slowly evolve into what you end with.
Tue, 2008/12/09 - 5:44pm
#11
I would stick two straws in there, you can each have a blow then - double the aeration. 
Good luck with the grow, look forward to the pictures.
Wed, 2008/12/10 - 1:47pm
#12
Maere didn't take to the "blow in the AG" idea. At 2.5 days, the heatwave mix and simpson elite is above the labels, the fragrent choi is almost that tall and the toy choi is sprouting but just to the top of the growpod. Nothing from the bimitas yet.
Wed, 2008/12/10 - 10:42pm
#13
Fingers crossed on the bimitas. I'd hate to think that entire packet was bad. 
Sat, 2008/12/13 - 12:01am
#14
I'm afraid the bimitas is a lost cause, I snuck a peek and the seeds look like the day I planted them. Everything else is doing well I think. The toy choi from the outrider experiment is nice and green but has NO stem to it, it got too leggy. Took the covers off all but the toy choi and bimitas a bit ago. I think they're a little slower than what you guys have experienced, what do you think for five days? Heatwave mix and fragrent choi in the back, simpson elite and toy choi in the front. The outrider red curl on the left is doing great....
Sat, 2008/12/13 - 12:42am
#15
They look nice!
Maybe I'd change my mind if I saw a picture, but I wouldn't really worry about toy choi getting leggy. It's not like its stem is growing to support pounds of tomatoes. It grows leaves for a few weeks. Then you eat it. No biggie.
Sat, 2008/12/13 - 10:56pm
#16
I went to complain to EvergreenSeeds that the bimitas lettuce seeds all failed, but their e-commerce site is closed. 
Oh, well. The others look more-or-less like what I ordered... Though Ann's description of amaranth as a "weed" sure doesn't seem to match the sickly performance of my amaranth seedlings.
Strange thing - I terminated one of my tendergreen mustard plants because its leaves were spiny. Only that one plant out of four. But one of four senposai komatsuna also seems to be of the spiny persuasion. (Haven't eaten any of those yet - the spines may not be objectionable on them.) The mustard was from Burpee. Weird, that some random seeds in a pack yield spiny versions of otherwise same-looking plants.
Thu, 2008/12/18 - 5:49pm
#17
Bummer about Evergreen. I removed the bimitas seeds today and replaced them with heatwave mix. They looked like the day I planted them. Everything is doing well and I've been a little remiss with pics, had other things going on. I think my camera is going wonky, I can't get decent color out of it lately and have to fix the pics best I can.
Lettuce at eight days:
Lettuce at 11 days, the red curl that's taking over top left and the toy choi, top right is from my outrider experiment:
Thu, 2008/12/18 - 11:03pm
#18
Not bad! How old is that korean red curl now? It's very red.
They have very good deals on cameras lately at Amazon...
Thu, 2008/12/18 - 11:23pm
#19
One nice thing about giving an Aerogarden as a gift, is that you can give custom kits for them as gifts next time. 
I'm making my mother a lettuces kit for Christmas. (I offered her a choice, of course - she picked lettuces.)
Fri, 2008/12/19 - 1:08am
#20
Nice present for your mother, lettuce grows so quick it's interesting to see how much it's grown every day. I'm sure she'll love it.
The lettuce colors aren't very true, I tweaked them best I could and brought out the red too much but the green is still too yellowish. The red curl and toy choi started in outriders on 11/19 so it's about a month old but they were growing at best half speed. They've really revved up since I put them in the AG. I'll have to trim the red curl soon to keep it from taking over.
Camera - <sigh> The one we have now does 95% of what I want and we hardly ever use it besides me archiving my plants and weather events. The stark black AG top screws up the auto exposure and color balance, never have a problem with normal colored things. Oh, and it can't handle the 6500K T-5s very well either. And it starts getting grainy above 200 iso. I'd love to have a new one that goes up to 3200 iso, depth of field would be a welcome pleasure and something I used to really work with.
I want to get back to what I had in the 35mm days, DSLR with 3 or 4 lenses and filters and teleconverters but can't justify the expense or carrying around a huge bag of stuff when we hardly ever use our little camera even though we take it with us. Usually. Some times. We forget it a lot.
Fri, 2008/12/19 - 10:21am
#21
Yeah, I think Mom'll like the lettuce. She buys fresh cello bags of greens every week. She was going to plant an herb garden just because she had the kit - her AG came with a 3-kit deal, and they messed up and gave her a second herb kit in addition (4 kits). But she never really used the herbs last time she grew them - just clipped, put in freezer, and mostly gave to me. Depression baby, though - unthinkable to get another kit before she'd used up all prior kits... So, I'm salvaging that herb kit as lettuce.
I got a new Nikon Coolpix s600 in June before going to Alaska - needed a good camera for that... I've been happy with it, and they've come down in price and had a model upgrade since June: $165 @ Amazon. I thought a lot about DSLR and all, but... I really wanted a P&S that got good pictures and allowed adjustments. This does.
Edit: have you ever tried Google Picasa on your pictures? They look a bit pixelated to me. I was very impressed with what Picasa did with my old camera's 2 Mpixel fuzzy shots - salvaged pictures that I wasn't managing to salvage with any of my usual bitmap editors.
Fri, 2008/12/19 - 3:09pm
#22
I D/L'd Picasa and let it find my 40 zillion pictures - Jeez! Haven't had time to really get into it yet, been busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger. I still fall back to old, old PaintShop Pro v3. I've got PSP v9, Adobe's CS3 suite and Corel's suite vX3 but hardly use them. Every camera I've had since the 60s has been a Nikon but I jumped ship 4 years ago with a Kodak DX7590 and ordered a Panasonic DMC-FZ28K last night, it'll be here Monday. How prices have changed!!
Never thought a person could have too many toys but I'm there. Learning all this new stuff doesn't come as quick as it used to, learning this thing and its mapping program has tied me up for two weeks.
Fri, 2008/12/19 - 3:36pm
#23
Ooh, nice camera! Yeah, the prices have fallen bigtime, even since I bought my Nikon Coolpix s600 back in June. And digital cameras have improved vastly since I got my previous one - especially grateful the dratted batteries last longer & memory is cheaper. Going on vacation with a camera that could only take 50 shots before memory full and battery needed recharging, wasn't too convenient...
Sun, 2008/12/21 - 7:45pm
#24
For Mom's Christmas gift AG kit, I used 4 heatwave lettuce across the back, with Korean red curl, Simpson Elite, and Korean red curl across the front. (My sister and I chipped in to get her an AG Classic last Christmas. Between this and that, it's been sitting empty since she had back surgery last month.)
Mon, 2008/12/22 - 12:57am
#25
That sounds like a great combination she'll love. How is her back doing? She could almost sit and watch the lettuce grow but exercise is a good thing. I spent some time in Picasa today and love it! Got rid of a bunch of non-picture stuff like different program logos, backgrounds, etc. I spent an hour just browsing through pictures from '99 remembering old times, that was really nice.
Here's the lettuce today at 2 weeks (Left & right rear spent 2 weeks in outrider) before we harvested some for salad and a neat picture looking towards the peppers, just for grins..
Edit... You can see the red curl, the heatwave mix is almost hidden next to it, toy choi front center and right rear and new heatwave mix above the cover in 3 days. Should be a beautiful sight.
Mon, 2008/12/22 - 11:43am
#26
Mom's back surgery went amazingly well, thanks. In less than a week, she was home, and her doctor has prescribed no PT, just walk all she can. And she says she's had no pain or painkillers since the first couple days' surgical discomfort. And she'd been in agony from her back for months. Going for a 3-week trip to Japan right before the surgery, in pain, didn't help... She's still wearing a back brace, but looks good!
Glad you like Picasa. These pictures weren't processed thru Picasa, though, were they?
Your plants already are a beautiful sight. The peppers and red curl are lovely. Are you going to put more lettuce plants in the toy choi slots once they're harvested?
Mon, 2008/12/22 - 3:22pm
#27
Umm... no ma'am, I haven't figured out how to process thru picasa yet, I'm old and slow, gimme a break. Toy choi - is it a one time harvest and if so, when? The way everything else is growing I may not have room for new lettuce plants. Our salads were great last night, BTW, mostly home grown lettuce and herbs with some store bought stuff to bulk it up a little - wonderful but like you mentioned, the red curl had no particular taste to it.
Great to hear about your mother, really glad she's moving and not needing painkillers. I was forbidden to work for 3 months when I had my first laminectomy back in the late 70s. After 5 weeks I was going stir crazy sitting around the house so asked the doctor if I could do some hiking. He said I could do a little but quit if it hurt. I did a 16 mile backpack trip with about 2,000 ft. elevation gain and back down carrying a 35# pack. Never hurt a bit. I'm a firm believer in exercise after surgery.
Mon, 2008/12/22 - 3:42pm
#28
LOL! I trust you didn't admit that 16 mile hike to your doctor? 
In Picasa, to make an album, you do File | New Album. Drag pictures into it, massaged and captioned and reordered as desired. When album arranged to your liking, right-click on album name in the list to the left. On right-click menu, select Upload to web album. Decide whether it's public or private, and let it rip. If you don't have a Picasa/Google account yet, you might need to fill in forms to register the first time. When it's done uploading, click button to view album of pictures online. Easy.
Toy choi get about 4" tall, in 4-5 weeks. Yours are nearly there. Then you eat them whole. Yes, one-time harvest. Kind of a silly crop, but I think they're cute. And sometimes it's handy to have a 4-week crop between other plans...
The thing that interested me in the red curl description, is that when the leaves get bigger, they're used as wraps, like for spring rolls or seafood salad or egg salad or fried rice. Kind of wrap a cigar out of them. Which sounded fun. Most of these lettuces aren't really tough enough for that kinda thing.
Sat, 2008/12/27 - 9:25pm
#29
3 weeks minus one day - we're being overrun! This stuff has gotten completely out of control, we need to do some serious trimming, please, please tell me what to trim and maybe harvest the oldest toy choi? What about the fragrant choi, is it a one time crop too? It's almost ready to audition for The Little Shop of Horrors, covering almost everything. Here's a quick shot, I hate to get too close. I can give you close-ups if you want. This is simply amazing.
Edit.... Just did a google search for Fragrant Choi and this site came up #4. Nice job!
Edit: Gisette fixed lightbox url.
Sat, 2008/12/27 - 9:31pm
#30
Aw! A salad! Your fragrant choi looks much better than mine ever did...
Yeah, if they're big enough, you can eat the toy choi now. Fragrant choi should be cut & come again like the others... Standard procedure with the lettuces is to harvest no more than 1/3 of the plant at a time, once every few days or so. Starting tomorrow. At age three weeks.
See? Aren't they a satisfying crop to grow? It could be tough getting something else started in the toy choi slot, though.
Sat, 2008/12/27 - 10:47pm
#31
Aw? I'm about to rent this thing its own apartment and all I get is Aw? 
We have a fantastic ham and it's time for a ham salad. Ain't gonna wait 'til tomorrow, we'll need the kitchen in the morning.
Edit... what did you have to do to my URLs?
Sat, 2008/12/27 - 10:54pm
#32
Your plants are wonderful, magnificent, truly monstrously big!!!
That better? Remember, I've grown lettuce a few times before. Though your fragrant choi definitely leaves mine in the dust.
I mentioned in one of the ones I fixed - use "s640" instead of "s912" on the link-to url. I have a huge screen, but I keep the browser only half-wide. The lightboxes then opened up as broken links. 640 works best...
Sun, 2008/12/28 - 1:24am
#33
Ah, gotcha on the size, will do. I took a machete to it and we had two huuuge salads with fresh basil and ham, one of the best salads I've ever had. I harvested the spindly toy choi from the outrider, the stems coming out of the grow sponge were about the size of pencil leads but the plants developed a few nice firm white stems. Good stuff, thanks for the seeds.
Sun, 2008/12/28 - 12:46pm
#34
Glad the seeds worked out for you!!! Maere approve of the lettuces, too?
Sun, 2008/12/28 - 5:58pm
#35
Hey Bruce, what are you doing here - you're putting my aerated AG to shame!
Nice work on the lettuce, they do grow rather well don't they. Aw! - fantastic.
Wed, 2009/01/07 - 8:10pm
#36
I have no idea what I'm doing special but this lettuce is really something, I've raised the light a half section and keep trimming the taller stuff. We've had three huge salads plus nip off a piece now and then to nibble on and it's still huge. We're going to have a couple of big salads tonight to celebrate having it
1 month now...
Wed, 2009/01/07 - 8:56pm
#37
Looks good! Don't think there's much unusual about it - Peat and I grew lettuce under smaller caliber lights. Looks just about right for more light.
Dumb question (TM) : how do you raise Deluxe lights "a half section"? Maybe I should go find the manual, huh...
Thu, 2009/01/08 - 11:00pm
#38
how do you raise Deluxe lights "a half section"?
I never saw it mentioned in the literature but when I first raised the lights I just pushed the button for a second and started raising, it stopped halfway. Makes sense once you think about it, raising a full section is a big jump.
Fri, 2009/01/09 - 1:16am
#39
Kewl! I shall go try that. Yes, it's a big jump for each full rise, compared to the Pro100 and my minis. They go up an inch or so at a time it seems.
Fri, 2009/01/09 - 9:12pm
#40
Hope you figured out how to raise a half section, it's darn smart of them to do that, they should mention it in the book. We had two huge salads with chicken breasts and 10,000 calorie dressing last night, today the lettuce looks like we never touched it. I'm awestruck! Thanks for sending the seeds, is there anything you'd like from the southwest? We've got some great seed stores here. How about some blue corn or Indian corn seed? The blue corn doesn't do much for me but the tourists like it, the Indian corn with all different colors is beautiful.
Fri, 2009/01/09 - 9:33pm
#41
Hm. No, still haven't quite got it. Hard to experiment with all that plant in the way - feel so guilty when I drop it on their heads. Probably should pull the lights up a foot and then experiment, huh...
Great to hear on the lettuce - you're getting good yields, then!
Funny - my condo's previous owner had the whole place done in southwestern style. I loved it! He even put a shelf one story up in one of those 2-story stairwells, and erected a tableau on top, wooden ladder (like they prop against an adobe house) with dog stepping up to howl at the moon. He wouldn't part with his gorgeous dining room pictures of baskets and pottery (he offered to sell me the dog ). He did leave one electric switchplate. Alas, my furniture runs towards 1000 shades of wood and leather and too many books, so it doesn't look very southwestern anymore.
Have any pretty cactus seeds? My daughter loves cactus. Which is good, since she's not great about watering the plants on her windowsill. My crop planters are already allotted for this summer, at least anything big enough to grow corn, though that's tempting!
Fri, 2009/01/09 - 9:43pm
#42
No cactus seeds but I can send you a bowl of them. They take forever and perfect care to germinate, at least for me. We just go out and dig 'em up but the nurseries have beautiful bowls of them. NM is over half public land so we can go 'most anywhere. Most land management folks frown on digging up plants and taking pottery shards but we do it anyway.
Funny about the previous decore, that's a howling coyote with usually a bandana around it's neck. It's so Santa Fe we hate it. I used to have a wooden coyote with a bandana, on it's back with all four legs in the air and Xs for eyes. Dinner's ready, later......
Fri, 2009/01/09 - 9:50pm
#43
Exactly! That's the tableau! Sorry, yes, coyote with a bandana, not a dog. 
Absolutely "Santa Fe".
The cactus bowls sound gorgeous. Harder to mail than seeds, though!
Fri, 2009/01/09 - 9:52pm
#44
Yeah, your back left pod was pure korean red curl, and started before everything else.
Thu, 2009/01/15 - 11:51pm
#45
5 Weeks, a monster conquered...
We had a couple of huge, totally home grown, fantastic salads with lots of herbs and chicken breasts Tuesday night, plus about 5,000 calories of dressing. Maere whacked them pretty hard but they're coming back already. She had trouble cutting 1/3 while the growth kept coming at her. Said it was like being Fay Rae in a 3-D movie where the Empire State building becomes a giant trellis. 
Today I planted two red curl pods where the toy choi had been, we both love it. Umm... choi is a member of thecauliflower family, right? And cauliflower gives you.... well, I blamed it on the leather chair and the dog all evening. Maere didn't buy it. 
Anyway, here's week 5 less one day and week 5 after many huge salads...
Thu, 2009/01/15 - 11:59pm
#46
Yup, toy choi is a brassica - the cabbage / mustard / broccoli / cauliflower family. Glad you're enjoying the greens! I kinda like the way it grows before my eyes. 
Much the way tomatoes and the nightshade family... don't. 
My little eggplant is still working on perfecting its first flower. It grows every day. Into an ever bigger and more elaborate... flower bud.
Fri, 2009/01/16 - 9:38am
#47
Nice work, turned out pretty good eh? Not much left in the AG now, the monster is tamed...
Fri, 2009/01/16 - 1:23pm
#48
Gisette's magic from last night is working, they're already looking like lettuce again and I can see some action from at least one of the five red curl seeds I planted yesterday. Maere loves this so much it looks like we'll have a constant lettuce garden growing from now on. I think in five weeks we've had 5 big salads and quite a few pinches as we walk by, just to keep it from touching the lights. All I can say is WOW.
Fri, 2009/01/16 - 2:11pm
#49
I always wonder what a Pro200 (with it's better lights), combined with my water bubbler would do...
Apparently we will, sometime in the near future, be able to purchase a Pro200 over here! Welcome to the up-to-date world of AeroGardening in the UK, we want an Elite not old Pro's!
Fri, 2009/01/16 - 2:14pm
#50
Do you have an ETA yet for when the Pro200 will be available in the UK?
Yay! Are you going to liquid-nute these or small-AG-nutes? I think I'm having better luck with the liquid nutes on the brassicas (mustards/cabbage family). Toy choi is the only brassica on your lineup though, and I think they did fine on AG small. Not a fussy brassica (like the ones in the defunct Aerogrow Baby Greens kit - they were fussy-fussy, especially about water flavor).
I'm very curious whether the bimitas germinates for you - I got zero germination out of like 8 seeds, in the outrider.