Looking Ahead

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During the growing season, seeding salad greens is a weekly task. A mix of greens is a staple of our meal so long as the ground is free of snow: It is assumed that boxes of salad will crowd our fridge, that seed packets will accompany us about the work day, and that the simple act of seeding new blocks of ‘Merlot,’ ‘Tango,’ ‘Lollo di Vino,’ ‘Dark Lollo Rossa,’ and ‘Revolution’ lettuces will be an automatic task consuming a portion of our time each week.  For such a simple process, the rewards are tasty, healthful, and colorful.  

Last week, however, saw a significant change in events.   

Last week, you see, we began to seed into cold frames. Cold frames are a simple piece of garden technology. A wooden box with a pane of glass or sheet of plastic covering its top, angled into the sun, a cold frame works like a mini-greenhouse. It creates a microclimate that offers protection to fragile plants like, in this case, lettuce.   

Now, sure, the nights are cooling off, but the summer heat is still hanging on to its banker’s hours. We’re not approaching frost weather quite yet. So for now, our cold frames are sitting wide open, the seeds not requiring additional heat beyond what the August sun continues to offer. But in planting these tiny lettuce seeds now, we’re looking ahead to when these greens will reach our plates. I can write with fair certainty that the leaves will have changed, “cool” will be replaced by “cold” in our daily descriptors, and frost will be upon us. Lettuce is no Herculean food – none of the above appeals to such plants in the least.   

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