F.A. Farm

This morning I noticed a few of my Rouge d'Hiver lettuce plants bolting. This is a very attractive, nice-tasting red Romaine that I got as plants from my neighbor. I also put this variety into my salad mix, which I direct seed into beds. When I got the plants they were quite large, so I grew them out, cut the heads and bunched them for my CSA boxes. I didn't need them all, so I left a few. Now the few that I left have grown up again and are bolting. I think I will let them go and harvest the seed.

I went to a seed-saving seminar two years ago and Romaine was mentioned as a problem seed in our area. Ideally, you want the lettuce to hold as long as possible, but yet put out seed in the right time frame for your climate. However, perhaps we can rethink a basic assumption. If a grower is using the Romaine in a salad mix for multiple cuttings, does it really matter if your particular landrace is slow bolting or late bolting? [A landrace is a localized strain of seeds.] I cut my salad mix when it is 4-6 inches high, as I find that to be the best compromise between mature lettuce flavor and succulence. I cut it several times and then till it under when it becomes bitter or tough. I don't really care if it is slow-bolting, because it never reaches the bolting stage.

This idea of timing of harvest as influencing your seed-saving decisions is similar to one of my previous posts about mitigating late blight by harvesting new potatoes. [New potatoes are out of the ground before the time of year when late blight is a problem.] This also uses the kind of mindset important to Integrated Pest Management, which is all about timing your actions to fit in with the pest's natural lifecycle. Adapting to the lifecycle of the plant your want, as well as the pest you don't want is a solid method to gain control over your food growing. Now isn't that a switch - adapting to another lifecycle to control it?