During July through October, I don’t expect any leafy greens from my garden. It’s hot here in the San Gabriel Valley part of Southern California and I have full sun on my garden. Everything bakes and is crispy, temps are routinely above 95F with heat waves that reach towards 110F. More water doesn’t seem to do anything but frustrate the gardener who is expecting something. And not to mention, a little irresponsible during our mega drought.

Lettuce seeds are difficult for me to grow. We have an extended fall here, we don’t really have winter. There’s a bit of spring. This past few months, I decided to experiment with lettuce seeds and every few weeks from October through April, I would drop some seeds in the dirt. Or in containers.

I experimented with Tom Thumb lettuce, mesclun, Black Simpson, buttercrunch, etc. I wanted to see which variety would suit the weather and type of condition.

Throughout the coming months I seeded and reseeded and managed to get one good crop of Tom Thumb Lettuce in October, everything after that was unsuccessful. I figured it got too cold. Then during March, there was a window of opportunity for about two weeks where it was warm and I was successful in sowing another batch of lettuce. Tom Thumb was a real winner again and a couple of Black Simpson. Then soon enough, it got too hot and the lettuce bolted. End of the lettuce season.

From the San Diego Seed Company Facebook page, they said that in order to grow lettuce in the summer, it would have to be with a shade cloth. I didn’t even attempt to grow lettuce in the summer because everything bolts so quickly. She mentioned this advice last year and this year and I thought, ok, why not? Another experiment.

I thought, I’ll try something easy like argula which I logged in as being one of the fastest germinators (5 days) and also Tom Thumb lettuce because its reliable and delicious. And basil, I could try it here since my batch this year was abysmal.

I started in the beginning of August, a time where I would normally just end my gardening for the season, and in a week, I had really impressive germination on all three things I planted. I had my olla pot (watch for a future blog on the olla pot) keeping the soil moist, hand watered for germination (about every 2 days) until seedlings establish roots, and covered the entire raised bed at all times.

My theory is that lettuce seeds love to germinate in the heat but hate direct sun which dries out the leaves. I don’t have a thermometer but I figure its a good 80 degrees under the shade cloth. Probably similar to mid-Spring weather and just about perfect for gardening.

So who would have thought that with all that experimenting that lettuce in the heat of August would be so easy to grow?