Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

No problems with bitter lettuce over summer this year. Its all been eaten already.

Hope we get some rain today. Weather man has promised rain all week but none yet. I've got hoses attached to all down pipes to try and get one last harvest this year. Another crappy year for rain. Forgot to put the cover on my pool and had half an inch disappear over night. Plants transpiring too much on these windy days. Recon I have lost over 100mm over October from my FT, water level down 200mm over winter. Compare that to last year when I had troubles keeping my drain running.

Growing lettuce is something I have a lot of experience with. I grow lettuce for market and I always make sure I eat some before I harvest for sale. Two things to pay attention to here.
First the type of lettuce makes a difference. Leaf type lettuces and boston or bibb types are really only well suited to spring, fall and winter crops. If you insist on growing these in summer use shade cloth or spun bonded polyester floating crop cover to moderated temperatures and transpiration. The best lettuce for summer is Romaine or Cos types and iceberg types. The second factor here is time. Most gardeners plant lettuce in the spring and expect that they can happily pluck leaves from their plants all summer long. You cannot. After a certain number of weeks all lettuce turns bitter no matter what cultural and environmental conditions it has. The number of weeks varies with the type, variety and culture and environment. The following is a guide to growing lettuce that is not bitter.

Leaf lettuce: 6-8 weeks.
Bibb or Boston lettuce: 8-10 weeks
Cos or Romaine lettuce: 8-10 weeks
Iceberg lettuce: 10-12 weeks

Growing lettuce beyond these time frames is living on borrowed time! It will turn bitter soon no matter what you do! You simply must plant more than one crop of lettuce per year if you want a consistent supply. End of rant.

And here I was thinking that lettuce were jsut bitter because they were emos...

very useful info thanks

Thanks for the info rangergord. I'm just seeding out some more basil for around my toms, then I might start a new rotation of cos and icebergs.

Anybody ever heard of someone getting sick from to healthy a diet. Father inlaw just got out of hospital after eating too much fibry food. Eats lots of lettuce in salads, mangos .. I thought his diet was pretty well balanced, but maybe too big on quantities. Very fit gent in 70's. We go on 10km runs together, I have nop probs keeping up, but he smashes me in the gym. 800 sit ups per day, swims daily...