How to Grow Lettuce in Containers: The Quick and Easy Way

today's video is sponsored by black gold compost company i want to thank the good people over at black gold for the generous domain donation of all this beautiful black cow cow manure that we use in our video today and it's made a tremendous success in our garden i've been using black cow for uh many years ever since 1980 and it's always made a tremendous difference in my garden and i've been very pleased with our product i highly recommend it thank you black gold for sponsoring our channel well good morning friends today we're going to plant some oak leaf lettuce together and get that started we'll be right back after the break [Music] well welcome back friends going to get these seeds started for this oak leaf lettuce i want to tell you about them um these are two oak leaf lettuce one of them is called tango and the tango is a real bright green oak leaf really good and tasty and the other one is called um a spritzer and the spritzer is a real dark red so i like to mix these two um varieties of oak leaf lettuce together when i plant because when we make the salad it's purdy we just like making things pretty around here and nancy's all about having you know multiple colors on her kimchi's and her foods and she she just loves presentation you'll notice whenever she makes a a meal she'll go out into the yard and pick flowers and all kinds of stuff that us guys would never think of doing when she makes the table a real pretty table makes for a real nice home setting but anyway we're going to do the um oak leaf lettuce here in two colors so there's a good pretty contrast when you put it in salad bowl and this is a good tasting lettuce too if if you've never had any oak leaf lettuce check it out because they're a good tasting and they're they're kind of a sweet tasting lettuce they're real small so when we harvest them we just harvest enough for a salad and then um let them continue to grow and we get a whole bunch of harvest out of them anyway i've got my um seed tray our seed sales ready to go here i got them packed in and the temperatures are finally cooling off here in florida we're down into the 70s now 60s at night and that's the kind of temperature range you want to look for to do your lettuce because if it's any hotter than that they have a real hard time germinating and even if they do then they have a hard time surviving because really don't forget you know lettuce is kind of a a cool weather plant so it's good to plant these in the fall and you can also plant them in the early spring it there it's a good vegetable for um both times of the year both seasons so this is our fall vegetable this may be um something you want to consider for your fall garden this year so there we go we got the um we got the trays packed i tamp them down kind of squash out some of that air and they'll start us a couple of uh trays here we'll make this one the spritzer spritzers the dark red remember okay now when i plant these i don't really try to get one or two seeds in each cell i put you know a pinch i get five six seeds in each one of them even more because i have found that when we plant these in the containers and it's got multiple little um plants coming up they do just fine because these things don't get real big remember they're kind of small and um that saves me a step because i don't have to come back and thin them out a lot of people do they try to thin it down to like one or two seedlings in each cup but i don't do that i'm maybe i'm getting lazy in my old age but all i know is it works just fine without trying to thin them out and go ahead and get you some extra seeds in there it ain't hurting a thing okay and they get plenty of them i got these seeds from johnnyc.com so if you want to get some of these seeds go on their website and check it out because man they got a whole bunch of um cool seeds to select from and gives you lots of good ideas for your uh fall garden as well as your spring garden so check them out and here's the tango the tango is a bright green one this is the one i was talking about why i like to um mix the colors together like that it makes a kind of a pretty presentation so there i go i'm dropping the seeds in i'm not being real careful with it i'm not even sure how many i'm getting in there it's a bunch and it don't hurt remember and we're going to grow all these seeds all these lettuces we're going to grow them in containers and the reason for that is is they're much easier to maintain and harvest while they're up on a grow table so you don't have to get down your hands and knees and maintain them and work with them the um the bug insect problem once you get them up off the ground like that greatly reduces that insect infestation that a lot of people get aphids and slugs and stuff like that you get them up off the ground on the table like this and they are much easier to work with and they're easier to keep the bugs off of them and another thing i like about that is if i grow them on the tables and i'm not down on the ground in the at the soil level you don't get all that irrigation and that rain hitting the ground and splashing all that sand and dirt up into the lettuce which makes it very difficult to clean you know when you get ready to eat it so it's pretty clean when it's ready to harvest because it's been protected up there on that table got the seeds in next thing i do is i just put a light covering of the seed starting mix on top of this we're really only looking for about a quarter of an inch of soil material on top of the seeds so you don't want to get them too deep in there because they have a very difficult time get getting germinated and coming on through that and even if they do it takes forever so if you put a real light soil cover on top of that it gives them a better chance of survival a much better germination rate and then everybody's happy okay so you get the soil covered on the onto the seeds pack it down a little bit you want to get it to where you're mashing that air out of there as much as you can and you want that soil to have good contact with that um seed you know so it's got something to stick to and it's got something to help it germinate and hold that moisture against it okay there we go now we'll do one final little lightly water these you don't have to water it very much the second time remember we only watered most of that tray and got it pre-moistened got our seeds and then we put a light watering on the top right and there we go okay got my little tags in let's go get these over into seed starting rack and get these things growing okay there's our oak leaf lettuce two trays the tango and the spritzer so we'll be back in the days ahead and we're going to watch the development of these um beautiful oak leaf lettuce all the way up to the day we harvest it so we'll be back soon in the days ahead as soon as this gets up where it's big enough to transplant and we're going to grow it in containers we'll we'll go through that process together so stay tuned we'll be right back well good morning friends our oak leaf lettuce has been out here on the grill on in the growing seed starting and growing rack for about two weeks now and it's really doing good if you come up and take a little close look here's the the um the tango which is a beautiful bright green color you can see that it's already getting a true leaves on it and there and the little seedling transplants are now up to about two inches tall and this is the spritzer the red oak leaf really got a beautiful color in the leaves already and they're really still only two weeks old so this is a good um tray i'm going to let these two trays continue to grow i say at least another week out here on on the seed starting rack and let them get a little bit more height and as soon as i get about another week on them then i'll hard them off for about three or four days and we'll get them transplanted and get them over to the uh um 40 shade cloth uh nancy's herb table and we grow a lot of good stuff over there under that 40 so these two trays will be ready here very shortly i'll be back soon and we'll carry on with the progression of this these little oak leaf lettuces together see you soon well good morning our oak leaf lettuce has been growing in the uh seed starting rack for a couple of a couple of days over three weeks today and if you come up here and take a close look you can look at the red the spritzer the red oak leaf as well as the tango the green oak leaf both of these are doing beautiful they've got plenty of true leaves on them now they're getting up big enough to where i can go ahead and transplant these so depending on how much time i've got today i want to try to get these transplanted today into some containers but i might have to wait until the morning but i got some other jobs i got to do but i just wanted to show you these um oak leaf lettuce how yummy yummy they look so we'll be back um to put these in the ground most likely we'll transplant them into the containers in the morning i'm just buried with uh lots of chores a day but i'm gonna get to it but i just wanted you to see that after a little over three weeks they ready so we'll be probably be back in the morning to get these into some containers and get them on the herb table over there and let these get growing so probably see you in the morning the tango lettuce and the spritzer lettuce have been out on the hardened table for a couple three more days and this tango the light green oak leaf lettuce it's ready to get put into the cups i'm we're going to use these smaller cups for this lettuce because it really don't get real big and this is plenty of all you need so you don't have to spend a bunch of money on soil trying to fill up big containers just use a small container it makes it much faster and easier because there's some fast growing stuff okay so here's the tango the spritzer is still a little bit small i'm going to let this grow out for maybe another week and so we'll come back and get the spritzer in the uh in the containers you know next in a few days and give this a little more time on the uh hardening table so we're about ready to get this started right right it's pretty easy i'm just going to put some of my container mix that i make myself so if you want to uh make some container mix yourself at home we got a little video nancy will put it on here for you on how to do that at home really nothing to it and then we're going to add a little bit of blood meal to each one of the cups as we put the plant in so let's get started okay let me show you how we do this because it's really nothing to it all we do is we put the um the container mix in into the cup and i push a small hole in there and i usually go tip of my finger to the middle of my palm and that always seems to work out just right i put myself in right out about a teaspoon of um blood meal in the hole then i take one of these beautiful tangos and remember we didn't try to put a single seed in each cell we didn't try to thin them down we just whatever went in the cell this one has this one has two in it so as as you can see it's okay they don't crowd up too bad they're okay when you leave them multiple plants in there and i'm not going to try to thin them down so when i take them out i have two three four little tiny lettuces in each one of my cells that's the way it is baby it'll grow just fine just like that so there's our first one so let me and nancy get together and let's get these things put in the ground and we'll get i mean put in the containers and we'll go over to the um to the herb table and get them out there under that 40 shade cloth and let them get going let's roll [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] well we got all the tango planted on the grow table we reserved this other end of the grow table for the red oak leaf so that'll be coming out you know in a few more days so right now nancy's watering them all in getting them all uh watered just right so we can get these things growing right babe get up some salads oh yeah so we'll be back in a few days while we put the rest of these out on the table and uh we'll be off and running so we'll be back soon well welcome back friends as promised i finally got the uh red oak leaf spritzer lettuce installed in the uh containers and i got them up here on the grow table so our little herb table here is becoming quite the salad bar the um oak leaf lettuce is looking really pretty it's getting uh it got a few more a couple of inches bigger sitting out there just a few days so it's really gonna explode now that it got a little bit more container and a little bit of blood meal in there i planted this exactly the same way as i did the tango so there's really no sense in going through that all over again but as you see we got a mix here of the tango light green beautiful lime green colored lettuce with the red oak leaf lettuce so nancy just loves combining colors and you can tell the difference in the black seeded simpson the green on that and the tango green the two greens are also another contrast we also got the romaine lettuce so we like to chop that up so by the time you take these one two three four different lettuces let eye and chop them up and put them in a beautiful salad and put some onions and tomato in there and a radish wow that's almost a meal you know so anyway we'll be back in the days ahead and we'll watch the beautiful lettuce table out here come to life and uh i'm sure nancy will come out here and make a delicious salad for us so we'll see you back in the days ahead as we watch this grow see you soon well good morning friends got our spritzer red oak leaf lettuce and our tango green leaf oak leaf lettuce has been on the table now for about four and a half weeks today's november the second we planted it uh from seed on september the 29th so it's doing really well we had it up under the 40 shade cloth until yesterday and the temperatures finally got a little more seasonable here in florida it's into the 40s at night and 70s during the daytime so i pulled them out from under the 40 shade cloth got them out here on the grow table in the full sun now they can tolerate pretty much uh eight nine hours of full sun out here with the cooler temperatures really with no problem so that's a good time to pull them out but if you take a good look at this uh beautiful oak leaf it looks fantastic the the um tango green as well as the spritzer red they both look beautiful so we'll be back in a few weeks here this is not going to take very much longer and it'd be ready to pick and we can put it together with the black seeded simpson and our um our green romaine and mix this be a really nice mix for our mixed salad so we'll be back in the days ahead and we'll watch the progress of this beautiful oak leaf lettuce see you soon well it's been six weeks since we planted our tango and our spritzer lettuce uh oak leaf lettuce from seed and today they're pretty much ready to harvest and uh start enjoying the um the tango is you know the the bright green oak leaf lettuce and the spritzer is the red oak leaf lettuce and you know as we've been talking about earlier the red oak leaf is going to grow a little bit slower than the green so they're both doing great they're doing just what they're supposed to do and these are really at the point now where we can go ahead and start harvesting and combining this beautiful lettuce together in a salad let's see how they how they look together i love that contrasting color very good lettuce so let's uh come on up and take a good look at uh you know what we got and uh we'll be ready to enjoy it well i hope you enjoyed tagging along with us on this journey of this beautiful oak leaf lettuce this might be something you want to try in your garden and i can promise you it ain't bad i think you'll like it it's really easy to grow and you can do it really great in containers whenever i go to harvest this it's easy to harvest as a comfortable working level it's not full of sand and dirt from being on the ground subjected to the splash up from irrigation and or rain so these containers is really a good way to go and it it produces quite nicely for you so we hope that our videos brought a joy to you a little joy to your heart and a smile to your face today and he kind of gave you a break from all of what's going in the world going on in the world today so until me and nancy see you next time we want to thank the lord for this beautiful lettuce buy us hands we are fed give us lord our daily bread amen have a blessed day [Music] you

Channel: Hollis and Nancys Homestead

Views: 57,263

Keywords: Easiest way to grow lettuce, lettuce from seed, lettuce from seed to harvest, lettuce harvest, hollisandnancyshomestead, how to grow lettuce, how to grow organic lettuce, how to grow lettuce from seed, how to transplant lettuce, lettuce, organic gardening, how to plant lettuce, how to grow lettuce at home, best garden, amazing garden, oak leaf lettuce, tango, spritzer, growing lettuce, gardening

Id: qoLWDAcf9kY

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022