Lettuce

I have never had very much luck with lettuce before. something always eats it. This is our first garden at our new place and it seems that lettuce likes it here. Late last season we discs the garden spot. Early this season a neighbor let us get two truck loads of turkey litter. we tilled the garden twice and i started planting with my root vegetables and lettuce.


Of course something started eating it. No telling what so i put up netting around it. Two plants died anyway. I thought it was getting to dry so i added leaves as mulch and them some fish emulsions as fertilizer. it took off. I fixed a nice salad for when my brother came down to visit form the garden. If you have never had garden lettuce and onions you don't know what you are missing. I just pick more yesterday and we had a big salad for supper and enough for another salad in a day or two. lettuce only keeps a little while in my refrigerator before it gets slimy. i am going to invest in a scale so that i can keep track of how much produce i get out of my garden this year.
I think i will make BLT's for supper. My husband will even eat lettuce that way.

beets

Valued for both their sweet roots and tasty greens, beets also bring interesting colors to the vegetable garden.
Beets are a cool-season crop best grown in spring and fall let them mature in cool soil for best color and flavor.
Plant beets in fertile, light textured soil with a neutral or slightly alkaline pH. Enrich the soil with a 2 inch layer of well-rotted compost before seeding.
Beet seeds often germinate sporadically, so sow seeds in shallow trenches filled with a mixture of compost and vermiculite. Plant seeds 1/2 inch deep and 1 inch apart.Hedging planting two to three weeks before the last spring frost. Keep the soil constantly moist until seedlings appear.
In areas with cool summers, make additional sowings of beets at three week intervals into the summer. In warmer climates sow most of your beets in late summer and early fall.
Beet seed are actually a fruit so sowing produces a thick stand, thin seedlings to 4 inches apart. The leaves of Young plants are edible. Remove weeds by hand and mulch around plants with a 1 inch layer
Keeping the soil moist and cool is key to growing sweet, uniform roots. If hot weather arrives be roe beets begin to swell, cool the roots by adding more mulch or hilling.
Beets are heavy feeders so it is helpful to amend the soil well with compost. Add supplemental fertilizer based on soil test
Begin harvesting beets when roots are golf ball size. Baby beets fully mature to 1 inch diameter in 60 to 70 days. Fall crops will hold in the garden until soil begins to freeze. Where winters are mild, some hardy varieties can be left in the garden.


Ok here is some new information that i have learned. A person could get 20tons of sugar beets from one acre of land and produce 6,000 pounds of sugar. You would have to let your cows eat the leaves if not you would have to cut them. Then dig and wash the roots. This is done the first year or you lose any nutrition. Then the roots are sliced and steeped in hot water for an hour. then the pulp is mashed and squeezed. The remaining pulp can be feed to cows. The sugar syrup is boiled down and made in to sugar. to do this on a large scale you would need special equipment. I plan on planting some to see what you could do on a small scale since i found no information on it. Small beets cannot be fed directly to cows since it posses a choking hazard.