How to Grow TONs of Lettuce in Containers

well today's video is sponsored by a black gold compost company we want to thank the good people over black gold for their generous donation of all this black cow cow manure that we're using in our video today thank you for sponsoring our channel well happy new day friends today we're going to talk about our salad bar we'll be right back [Music] well welcome back you know i've been uh kind of struggling uh trying to fight this diabetes for a while you know several several years i guess but it's actually uh it's caught up with me you know so um i'm full-blown diabetic now and uh the um diet for a diabetic is not real purdy but uh i was at the doctors and uh you know they said no carbohydrates of course but you know i said well what do you put on your plate when you can't have a potato i mean i love potatoes and stuff like that because fill it up with salad and i said ah that sounds like a pretty good alternative and she goes you should start a garden i went it just so happens that i have one so out in the garden uh you know we have a um a little area that we've always called it the salad bar for many years and i built this table over there when we first moved here and i put a 40 percent shade cloth over the top of that table that way if we want to grow some lettuces and herbs and things like that in the springtime we can stretch it out a little bit further because i can get a little bit more mileage out of that shade cloth than i could if it was just sitting out in the sun because especially down here in florida it gets so hot so fast that trying to grow lettuce in the spring if you don't get it in real early you're not going to get it to go very long because it gets hot real quick and that noonday sun will just eat them up you know it's just bolt and they won't be fit deep so by putting the um the 40 shade cloth over there i get full morning sun and then the you know about 11 o'clock or so that sun gets on up and that shade cloth protects them with a 40 block and then in the afternoon as the sun goes off to the west back here i have these tall pine trees you see back here behind me they cast a shadow right down on that salad bar which in effect protects them from the western setting sun which is really damaging to really all plants especially lettuce so anyway we got the salad bar all set up and and we left and came home from the doctor nancy came in and she ordered me some new seeds for the salad bar we've got all kinds of good stuff out there growing now we've got you know some some stuff that she started i i'm not even sure what it is she put it out there some stuff to put on top of the um the salads to make them more interesting and more tasty so she's got some of that going for me we've also got black seeded simpson growing out there which is my favorite leaf lettuce so we we were growing that anyway so i just grow more and then you know we've got you know some other uh romaine lettuce started up it's growing pretty good we've got the salanova green butter head um lettuce which i i think is a pretty tasty little lettuce so we've got some of that going we've also got some bok choy we can chop up and also some kachimpsi which is really an asian spinach so really we got a pretty good assortment of things out there on the salad bar as well as the grow tables that we can enjoy together especially me with uh being diabetic now i can um try to cut down on a lot of stuff that i was eating that was not really all that great and and increase the the salad intake so anyway we're growing a lot of good vegetables out here in a garden that are really healthy for me and nancy and that's what we're going to focus on instead of some of the bad stuff that you know i tend to gravitate toward i'm not a very good diabetic guy i i like to be a meat and potato guy you know so anyway nancy got these seeds for me and she surprised me with it she goes this is for your salad bar it'll make your salads more interesting i said okay thanks sweetheart here's a she got me um a one that's just a green mix it's called premium greens mix which we got you know from johnny seed where she got from johnny's seed and then she also got me another lettuce that i'm very fond of called tango it's another um leaf lettuce he's got that at johnny's seed as well and i can mix that in with my my other lettuces that are growing and then she got me this one and i'll never pronounce this right sean geeker or something like that i i'm terrible at pronouncing all these asian names especially with my southern draw but this is a leafy asian green this is another one that nancy bought at um johnny seed these asian greens are really pretty good you get they have a lot of assortment so if you look at johnny seed they have a lot of asian greens also go to a kitazawa seed company they have a huge inventory of asian vegetables and if you're you know diabetic like me you can get into some interesting little asian toppings for your salad that are very healthy for you and they give it kind of a different taste and it just makes it better for you so anyway today i wanted to start some of these uh these seeds i got out my seed trays here i filled them up with some seed mix and um i thought we would do it together and get them out you know over here to the seed starting rack and let they get get them germinating and after they get up a little bit we'll step them up into some a little bit bigger containers one gallon maybe the six inch cups or something and we'll do that together of course and then we'll get them from you know after we step them up we'll get them over to the salad bar so we can get some healthy salad and we'll watch this all the way through until uh ms nancy harvest some of this stuff and makes us a delightful salad to taste so let's get started on getting these seeds going okay we're ready to get started here what i did is i just put some um seed starting mix in these trays and what i want to do at this point is just water those things down and pre-moisten them just a little bit so i'll get those um cell's wet now let that soak down for just a second and we'll be right back okay looks like we've got our uh our seed tray soaked down a little bit pre-moistened i like to tap it a couple of times just to get it on down then we'll take we'll start off with this these asian greens now these seeds are pretty small and i'm not trying to count how many seeds i put in every little seed cell okay all i'm gonna do is i you see how small and difficult they are to handle all i do is i take a small pinch right and i go and i just sprinkle in each cell and i don't really care how many i get in there if it's two or three four five that's okay however many goes in they will all pretty much grow so sprinkle them in just like you're putting pepper in i've actually seen some people take a salt and pepper shaker and they put their their small stuff like this in there and they just shake it in i said you know one thing about gardening you watch enough people and you'll get enough ideas to wear you you'll get pretty good at gardening just from everybody else and that's the good thing about gardening is we all learn from each other it's really no one way is the right way it's kind of a composite of things that you learn over the years and you kind of develop your own little style of how you like to do it and then so doing you become your own unique little gardener okay let's put some of the uh other this is the the green premiums green mix so let's do the same thing with that very small seeds take a pinch and i start putting sprinkling them in that should be plenty save some for next time maybe i get a second round out of this if i if i'd have known i was going to get such good salads being a diabetic maybe i could have become a diabetic sooner of course i'm just kidding people you don't want anything to do with these diabetes okay i put a little bit of seed mix right on top of what i just did and i spread that around to where i have a very thin layer of the seed mix covering those seeds i only really need about a quarter of an inch over those seeds not very much at all really you're just wanting to make good contact with the soil so then i kind of tap it all back in tamp it in a little bit with my fingers feels like that's got a pretty good contact okay next thing i do is i put my little tags in i got i'm gonna put a tag on each six pack because i tend to get these things mixed up there we go all set all we have to do is lightly water that in and get it over to the uh the seed starting rack and get these off and running so let me go get that last tray of tango set up and we'll get them going too well there we go got a whole tray of the tango half a tray of asian greens and a half a tray of mixed greens so i think that'll be a nice little addition to the salad bar over there so we'll watch this in the days ahead and watch the progress of this all the way up until we can make a salad so we'll be back in you know about a week or so take another look at it then see you soon [Music] well good morning homestead family welcome back uh it's been seven days since we um we started these seeds together for our asian mixed greens as well as our um mixed greens as and our tango uh leaf lettuce and i just wanted to give you a little update on it the um the mixed greens have pumped up they're doing pretty good i see plenty of cotton leaves i'm gonna let these things grow a little bit further until i see a true leaf then we'll transplant them the asian greens are just barely breaking the surface very very young so they're uh they're getting there they're going to take a little bit longer than these mixed greens but that's okay these are um doing just what they're supposed to do here's our uh our tango lettuce you know it's it's coming along just barely breaking the surface but for seven days i'm i'm well pleased with their with their performance so we'll be back in the days ahead as we uh let these things get a little bit bigger out here in a seed starting rack and at that point i'm going to move them over to the hardening table for about three days and then we'll get out the little pots and we'll transplant these and get them out to the salad bar so we'll be back and probably about yeah maybe within the next 10 days take another look at them see you then [Music] well welcome back friends today is day 13 since we uh sewed this seed for our uh greens to go over in the salad bar and the uh the little mixed greens here that we started are now ready to go into um you know step them up into the the bigger cups so we can continue to grow these um they're ready to go the asian greens that we started they're really lagging behind a little bit and they're just having a little bit of trouble getting started but we won't give up on them and then we have the tango lettuce that's a really good oak leaf lettuce that that's about a week away from me transplanting it so today i want to demonstrate how to transplant these little seedlings over into a larger cup so we can get them on the grow table and i'll go ahead in the days ahead and transplant these and get them over there and when we get them all over there you know we'll come back and do another update so today let's uh go ahead and get these planted and we'll do that one together and then you'll know how to do these because it's exactly the same process so let's get started okay i've got the i'm using some little six inch cups and i filled it with my container mix that i always make and the next step is to simply just punch a hole in there tip of my middle finger to my palm i do the same thing on this one okay and i take about right at about a teaspoon of blood meal and i put it right in the hole pop the little seedling out it goes right in the hole pack the sides to kind of get it good and tight to hold it up and there you go let's do this one too take out the seedling right in then i collapse the sides and kind of push it down right there and that will hold it right in place for the duration okay let's get these over on the salad bar and get these things growing last step is i just really lightly water these in and i'll water these in each morning and i'm wanted to point out i'm using a 40 shade cloth to grow these outside so if you're growing these yourself at home try to find you a place that's got partial shade and you really shouldn't have too much trouble with them so we'll be back in the days ahead when i get the rest of the table full of what's left in the seed starting rack we'll come back and take a look at where we're at with the salad bar see you soon well welcome back friends it's been 17 days since we planted our our lettuce out here in the seed starting rack and got them going and it's been four days since the last time i talked to you so take a look at the asian greens you can see what it did in the last four days there's some very slow progress being made here but progress is being made so we're gonna let these stay out here a little bit longer and let these mature a little bit more and if you took a lake look at the tango oak leaf lettuce it it's really made some giant strides this week you know it's up about two inches now got plenty of true leaves on them so at this point we can go ahead and take those tango lettuce out of those little seed starting cups and step them up into some six inch cups and we'll get those right on out there onto the salad bar with the other lettuce and various herbs that we have going out there so let's get started well here's the six inch cups that we're going to be using as you can see that's not a very big container at all and you don't need a very big container for these uh these small lettuces because they grow pretty rapidly and there's no sense in spending a whole bunch of money on making up container mix when you're only going to use about three inches of that soil from this from the top of the edge of the container anyway so just wanted to point that out [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you [Music] so [Music] so [Music] well there we go kind of a busy morning today but we got um we got the tango lettuce stepped up into some six inch cups and we got it out of here on the salad bar so we'll be uh watching the progress of this in the days ahead and we'll also keep our eye on those asian greens over there they're still at the kotlin leaf stage so probably about another week before we get those out here but we'll be back when those are done and get them out here on the table and we'll take a look at everything out here on the table after i got everything out here so we'll be back maybe a week week and a half take another look at the salad bar see you soon [Music] well welcome back friends it's been nine days since our last update on the little salad bar progress just thought i'd update you today if you come up and take a little bit of a close look here at these asian greens you can see they're trying to actually start getting some true leaves on them they're growing very very slow but they are trying to try to get in a little bit of traction now um they're having a little bit of a hard time because it's starting to get kind of hot here in florida now and i might be out here just a little bit late for these but we're going to give it a shot anyway but we're going to keep keep our eye on those these little fellas until we can get them on up big enough to transplant out in the salad bar so we can enjoy some asian greens so let's head over to the salad bar we'll take a look at the um the mixed greens that we planted a couple weeks ago and the um and the tango lettuce everything else is doing pretty good out there in fact we're already i'm already making some salads so i need to give you an update before i eat it all let's go check it out well here we are out at the salad bar the the little mixed greens are doing really good if you look down the line you can see they're all up about six inches tall and at this point they're ready to start eating and uh and i have been doing so so these are some really uh delicious little ass additions to your salad that's a great topping or you can just make the whole salad just out of that it's pretty good and over here is the tango lettuce if you'll remember when we planted the tango it was very very small one to two inches tall you can see they're up about four inches now and really getting ready to explode so they're these are doing great and uh so are the uh the brown seeded uh black seeded simpson this is actually our third uh round of the black seeded simpson and we've been eating i mean planting it in succession off all spring so that's a really good leaf lettuce and uh this is a really good oak leaf lettuce the tango so anyway the all these combinations you know with the the salanova that's over here as well as the uh um romaine we have a pretty good selection of items for our salads so uh anyway nancy will be coming out and making some salads out of this here in the days ahead and we'll be back and and enjoy a salad together so we'll be back very soon in the next few days and we'll come out and harvest up a little salad for lunch we'll see you then so [Music] well welcome back friends the little asian greens are really struggling because summertime actually hit we've had like the last four days in the 90s and these poor little seedlings just can't make it we tried didn't we baby so we'll try these asian greens again in the fall when it cools back down because they look like they'd be very tasty but for now you know the rest of the salad bar over there is thriving we've been really enjoying it all spring and i thought the day we just go over there and make us a small salad and have it for lunch and we'll have it together with y'all so let's head over to the salad bar and pick us up some greens well here we are out at the salad bar and miss nancy's right busy doing a little harvesting uh if you look down here these are the mixed greens they have really just exploded and they're doing beautiful i love the way it's got like all different kinds of things bok choy radish lettuce you know it's really a nice beautiful mix of flavors as well as a beautiful presentation in the salad bowl and over here we got our tango lettuce that we started together it's just now starting to get going good there's a couple that we can go ahead and harvest it today but these these will get much bigger in the days ahead but this is how they how they look and they're a great oak leaf lettuce and behind me here is the black seeded simpson that we this is about our third or fourth succession planting of this this really grows well in the spring under this 40 percent shake off i was surprised i was able to get this many rounds out of it with it being this hot out here already but that's like my favorite leaf lettuce it's very tasty so all of these um lettuces that we use are very nutritional and being that i have to include a lot of that on my diet now it's important that we grow things that are not only taste good but have a lot of nutritional value in them so we're going to give us together a little bit of lettuce for a couple of salads we're going to go grab a red onion out of the drying rack we harvested them last week and maybe we'll go grab a few little cherry tomatoes and is that about do it want a baby [Music] salad today that's about it and you're going to cook a little something to go with it for lunch like meat or something some kind of meat we're going to have rotisserie chicken rotisserie chicken oh baby so let's get busy because i'm getting hungry just thinking about it [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] greedy [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] well you've outdone yourself what a beautiful salad yep all from the salad bar outside it is let's thank the lord for this cause i can't wait to eat that buy us hands we are fed give us lord our daily bread amen amen oh boy yeah the salad looks really good it really does and we got the carrots from our garden and we rotisserie the chicken on the here later on we'll get our own chickens but for now we're doing good yep there's some red onion oh get what you want here let me get you some too thank you [Music] tomatoes you know these cherry tomatoes these things are the best cherry tomatoes we've had in several years they're very sweet my tomato garden is doing awesome this year i mean it's just i don't know what made them so sweet this year i wish i knew that secret i'd do it every year i think we planted it earlier so it had all i know is it tastes good yeah this is um my favorite sauce salad dressing got that asian kick to it you want some yeah please take a little bit let's taste it the salad you worked hard on all year we've really been eating a lot of salad i'm turning into a rabbit yeah but it's so good for you you need to do that now for your diabetes i'm glad you're growing all sorts of wonderful salad to do that um [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hollis and Nancys Homestead

Views: 171,941

Keywords: hollisnancyshomestead, growing lettuce, garden salad, salad, cooking, recipe, food, hollis, gourmet salad mix plant, gourmet salad, how to, grow ton lettuce, hollis and nancys homestead, gardening, garden, complete growing guide, hollis and nancy, grow tons of lettuce, seed to harvest

Id: mhdljlSeySs

Length: 40min 22sec (2422 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023