The Great Lettuce Experiment Continues

The lettuce kept growing in the bowl of water. I don’t know why but every time I looked at it I was enchanted. It seemed so magical. It had never occurred to me to take the base and regrow from it. I’d been turning the lettuce cores into compost. 🙂 Also a very fine use. I understand I can do this with leeks and celery as well. My next experiment!!!

We all decided, however, that sooner or later the lettuce was going to need additional nutrients. That meant either adding nutrients to the water or planting them. I opted for planting. This morning I took them outside, prepared two pots, and got them into the soil. This morning also revealed that I’d lost a skirmish in the great Deer Wars. Someone figured out how to remove the netting I’d place loosely over the echinacea along the driveway. It was chomped.

I got out the bamboo poles and the netting and fenced in that area. I figured that I’d better protect the lettuce as well. I needed to not only net them but raise them up to protect them from ground ‘critters’. I took two of my plant stands from my porch (used in the past for raising up palm trees) and put them in the ground, with the pots on top. Then I added netting. I have the aromatic herbs in front of that, and they seemed to have protected the echinacea that’s in that bed, but I decided to stretch the netting over the echinacea as well.

I may have lost a skirmish last night, but I believe I’m winning the war. My neighbor across the street told me she watched a deer yesterday come around the side of the house. It walked along the front netting. Then it walked through the gap between the pots and the front netting and down the driveway. Which is where and when it undoubtedly munched the echinacea. But the very fact that my hibiscus and other yummies were untouched is proof that my strategy is effective!