Great Wall of Lettuce Update

(The Great Wall of Lettuce today after the first harvest of Rapini and Lettuce)

It's been a few weeks since the start of the great wall of lettuce project. Here's an update and a long overdue thanks to my GM friends for offering up their empty 1-5 gallon pots for the experiment ... and to MM for the chocolate mint plants: they love their new home on The Wall.

The wall supports about 16 1-gallon pots and a few 3 and 5-gallon pots. Here are some observations:

• Keeping the plants hydrated is easier than expected. The plants get enough afternoon shade and are protected from the wind. they only need water 1x per day.
  
• Getting the water onto the pots is harder than expected. The best method has been hand watering with a hose. The line drippers don't spread the water well enough and the spray dippers just don't angle properly allowing too much water waste and runoff.
• The 1-gallon pots are too small for more than one plant at a time. There just isn't enough nutrient in the soil to grow truly useful plants.
• The 5-gallon pots grow enough leaf lettuce for a nice dinner salad and the shoots regrow after harvesting.
• The baby bok choy seeds weren't planted deeply enough. The plants are spindly
• The mint loves it semi-shade exposure (about 4 hours of sun a day)
• The bigger pots have a tendency to topple over. The container cuke was damaged by a bad fall.
• Lettuce and Rapini have worked the best. Both were in 5 gallon pots. Maybe the baby bok choi will be better planted deeper.
  

90 Days: Time to Replant

Musing on replanting... a kind of recycling. Recycling the space that has stopped being useful. Like cleaning closets. Letting go. Out with the old in with the new:

The Old (Planted March 13):

• 6-7 sq. lettuce. Romaine 2-3 plants per square was enough to give us a daily salad for about 2 weeks.
• 2 sq. snap peas. Enough to provide a morning snack every 3rd day for about 2 weeks
• 2 sq. bush beans. provided about 2 cups of green beans. Very discouraging really.
  

The New

• Lettuce growing in the great wall is useful as a source of transplants. I'm moving plants to the empty squares and hoping they don't bolt. They aren't really getting enough sun on the wall. Maybe 4-5 hours a day. The plants are spindly and sad.
  
• 2 squares of pole beans planted in the watering trough.
  

Status Update June 4, 2010

The lettuce seedlings emerge. As of today, 16 pots are planted with a variety of Mesclun, baby romain, baby bok choy, mint, and rapini. The 12 bush beans planted at the bottom will soak up any water that splashes out of the gutter and provide more shade for the lettuce if they grow. This experiment, based on Mel Barthomew's square foot gardening techniques with a dash of hybred hydroponic gardening priciples tossed in for good luck is entirely ad hoc.

From Renee's Garden: "Mesclun has come to mean any mixture of young salad greens that is sown, grown and cut all together."

What did I plant?

Although I adore experimentation in the trial and error way, I've never been good at keep records. I did jot down a few notes about what I planted and when and even managed to get most of it written in the same book. Yesterday I tried to transpose it all into an excel spreadsheet, but forgot to save. Oh dear. We're back to the void.