Winter Gardening Experiment!

With the recent onslaught of guru vegetable gardeners, and all the information there is from them and in the world of media, I was on a mission to see if it could be done.  Living in a Zone 3 climate, vegetable gardening outside in March is unheard of, but what I was hearing "yes, you can garden in March outside".  And so the 'experiment' began!

On March 5th, 2018 I seeded two varieties of lettuce, Mascara (Seed Saver's Exchange) and Garden Babies Butterhead container lettuce (Renee's Seeds).  I seeded them in a six pack coir container and did not put it onto a heat mat.  In approximately 3 weeks they were ready for the shock of their lives, to be put outside!  I transplanted them into, cut open (almost all the way around), 4 litre plastic milk jugs with drainage holes punched into the bottoms.  In went the potting soil and I planted the lettuce seedlings, with their coir pots (making sure that none of the pot edges protrude out of the soil as this would wick away the moisture from around the plant) into the soil.  I planted four lettuce in each milk jug and watered them well.  They were duct taped around the cut sides sealing the jug up, virtually making a mini greenhouse or terrarium.  And out they went into the snowbank with  most overnight temperatures dropping initially to the mid-teens fahrenheit.  There they sat with not a peek inside until mid-April when the daytime temperatures were beginning to heat up. 

I unscrewed the top and Wow!  had they grown and were so beautiful. The Butterhead grew better than the Mascara.  As they were both outgrowing their spaces I transplanted them into large patio containers.  In these they matured to harvest and dining on fully mature heads in mid-June.

Update to 2019 where I grew only the Butterhead lettuce and changed two growing procedures, seeding directly into the milk jug soil, and secondly not using coir mini containers but rather reusable cell packs where I could remove the seedlings and plant into the milk jug.  Seeding directly into the soil the lettuce was much later in germinating but did eventually almost equal in maturity, approximately two weeks later.

The conclusion is that both methods work, seeding directly or pre-growing, and an excellent way of doing so as it offers a staggered maturity and accessible edibility over a longer period of time.

Gardening is always a challenge but sometimes we have to challenge ourselves to step out of our gardening box and have fun.