1More Gardening Tip

It's getting late and most of you reading this new blog are in the midwest. As you're picking your Romas and Beefsteaks, you might be thinking about how best to wind down the season. My wife, being the genius that she is, has devised a simple way to grow lettuce well into the late summer heat. Now, before I reveal this tip, please forgive me for not having pictures. We've just done a major relocation and left our massive garden behind. In the chaos of packing boxes I neglected to snap some photos of this contraption. Well, here ya go...

My wife actually conducted an experiment. In one of her square foot gardening beds, she planted a row of romaine lettuce just as she normally would, only very late in the season (late June/early July). This was the control group. She also planted another row of the same romaine seeds, only she planted them next to a row of peppers that already had a few inches on them. On the OTHER side of this row of romaine was a row of tomatoes that she'd started earlier in the season. The tomatoes were already steadily climbing one side of an INCLINE lattice that she made out of bamboo and jute twine. The experimental romaine had a nice shady spot at the base of the inside of this a-frame, shaded on one side by the tomatoes and on the other side by the peppers.

The results? Sure enough, the control group romaine was obliterated by the July sun, but the shaded romaine gave us several fresh salads before our early August move! Neat.