Lettuce

I mentioned in another thread that I planted a lettuce mix - the seeds included all lettuce varieties the company grew last year. I counted on their website - this could be up to 27 different varieties. I wrote them down, then looked at pictures of each variety on various Websites. So far, I'd guess that I have about 8 or 9 different types, with my latest planting too small to tell. I took pictures today to see if I could actually pair them with one of the Web images and therefore a name.


This looks like a young Red Sails, Forellenschluss, or maybe Amish speckled. Red Sails, fully grown, is much redder on the edges and very, very frilly, but I couple images of young plants (on other websites) appeared to look much like the other speckled varieties. As it matures, I'll probably be able to pinpoint it.

This lovely bright lime colored looseleaf is probably Salad Bowl.


Others that seem sure are Bronze Arrowhead, Buttercrunch, and Little Gem.

But, the one below, has what looks to be flower buds! The leaves are definitely not a butterhead texture, nor a looseleaf I wouldn't think. They are a bit coarse, heavy, thick, with a heavy strong rib. At this age, most lettuces are very tender....this doesn't appear tender in the least. It could be a romaine, I suppose, but it's not really forming a head in the middle, as a couple other potential romaines are. There are three of these, all with what appear to be flower buds.

I did move some seedlings around and planting some other seeds without noting what I'd done but this doesn't appear to be anything else I've purchased either (note: always be careful when planting seeds Write down every thing you do, every move you make, every seed you plant. It's easy to think, Oh, I'll remember that I moved X from here and planted K, Q and B in its place....not).

Anyone have a clue what this might be? You can actually see what looks to me like buds in the center of the plant.


I've read that lettuce can also bolt from stress. So, I suppose it's possible that this was induced by some poor care on my part...though I'm at a loss to identify what it could have been. Later today I'll break off a leaf and taste it to see if it's too bitter. If it's not, I guess I should eat it pronto so it doesn't get that way.

[quote="ViewsAskew"]Anyone have a clue what this might be? You can actually see what looks to me like buds in the center of the plant.

/quote]

I have the same mystery lettuce growing up in and around my lettuce garden. I nibbled some. It was fine. Don't know what it is but I'm following this thread to see if anyone does.

pretty sure that's not lettuce. looks like some sort of specialty "green." not that that will help you identify it...

Bok choy (family).

Picture of lettuce seedling with red spots is not Red Sails, which has so much red in the early leaves that the seedlings are hard to see against dark soil.

Mystery plant is not lettuce. It might be a smooth-leafed mustard green (most are curly, savoyed or serrated), but bolting at that stage under the weather we have had is unlikely. My best bet is that it is a flower-bud type Asian green, a brassica rapa. See the similarity to Summer Jean although the stems and ribs are a different color so that is not an exact match. The stem structure is not bok choi, also a brassica rapa, although the leaves are quite similar.

Let me rephrase- Shanghai Bokchoy or "Baby Bok Choy" as they're sometimes sold or chingensai (in Japanese)... a subspecies of brassica rapa - originally classified as B. chinensis again just guessing, but yes I agree probably an "Asian" green...

ekreider wrote:Picture of lettuce seedling with red spots is not Red Sails, which has so much red in the early leaves that the seedlings are hard to see against dark soil.

I'm going with Forellenschluss.

It's totally possible that the mystery plant is an Asian green in the mustard family. I do have seed packets for gai lohn. But, I didn't think I planted it....it bolts so easily in the summer and I didn't start it early enough, so was going to plant it in the fall. I've thought for awhile that it didn't look like a lettuce....but I've never grown much lettuce, so thought maybe I just wasn't aware of some variety that looked like this.

I could have decided to plant the Gai Lohn in a momentary weakness of wanting it anyway, even though I knew it could bolt and taste awfully strong. And, since some lettuce plants had already been transplanted, I could have planted them in the space where lettuce had been.

I'll know more as it gets older, I suppose.

Per the red spotted lettuce, I also thought it couldn't be Red Sails, but unless a couple different growers mismarked photos of it, the baby stuff looked just like this. Then again, so did Forellenschluss and Amish Speckled. Since I haven't grown Red Sails, I assumed their pics told the correct story, even though the mature plant obviously looks a lot different. If you're sure that baby Red Sails still have a lot more solid red, then I'll cross it off my possibilities.

David, could you have planted any Asian greens?

Here's a few types of lettuce I've got going right now - hopefully the photos will be helpful in identifying some of what you have growing...

Quatre Saison:



Tom Thumb:



Green Salad:



Red Cress:



Arugula:



Lucullus:



I think you definitely have Green Salad in the photo you posted, I have some Little Gem that I can post photos of tomorrow - it's the top row of lettuce in this shot:

Yeah, I think your "green salad" and my "salad bowl" are probably same variety, potentially a bit different name.

I found an article from the 1970s about lettuce varieties. It was a study done by people in several European countries. They found that while there are many hundreds of names of lettuce, they could reduce these down to just a couple hundred separate distinct types. That was 1970's....it seems that we have new varieties constantly anymore...or are there? I wonder what the actual count would be now?

Your red cress is interesting....I have something from my last planting that looks a bit like chard to me. But, unless I'm totally crazy, the chard is in a completely different place, lol, and this IS lettuce of some kind. It's not identical to your red cress image, but looks a bit similar. It's still quite small, but in a week or two, I'll upload an image of it.

ViewsAskew wrote:Yeah, I think your "green salad" and my "salad bowl" are probably same variety, potentially a bit different name...

Your red cress is interesting....I have something from my last planting that looks a bit like chard to me. But, unless I'm totally crazy, the chard is in a completely different place, lol, and this IS lettuce of some kind. It's not identical to your red cress image, but looks a bit similar. It's still quite small, but in a week or two, I'll upload an image of it.

Yeah - I think the "Green Salad" and "Salad Bowl" are the same. I got my Lettuce seeds from Victory Seeds this year. I think they may have just left "bowl" off the packet, since they sell both a Red and Green Salad Bowl.

I think I just mistakenly wrote "Cress" on the row marker - it is definitely Chard - I planted some Upland Cress nearby that I prolly labelled "Upland Chard"

As a quick point of reference, I don't think you have red sails. I planted it last year. Here's a pic that is about at the same stage as yours:

I never thought I'd find myself saying this, but all these lettuce pictures are making me hungry . . .

Tyrus - that's what I thought the red sails would look like. I'm guessing that the other folks got their planting goofed somehow, because two different people on the Net have pics of lettuce that are labeled red sails (and even have a little pokey stick label beside it) and it looks speckled....I didn't think it made sense, but who am I to assume they were wrong! Since you clearly know what you had and it definitely looks like I'd expect it to look and nothing like the speckled stuff, that's definitive for me!

Attrill, I'm definitely going to go stare at the stuff in the lettuce row that looks like baby chard...I haven't a clue. I have chard elsewhere and it's NOT the same as this stuff and I only have one type of chard seed packet. Besides, I'd remember the seeds if they were stuck in with lettuce seeds, so it can't be a seed mistake... Over time, I guess it will become clear what it is.

I have something in my garden just like your mystery lettuce and I am 99% sure mine is Bok Choi and some of my plants have seedes just like yours-oh well.

This is the weirdest thing....I did some more thinking about this. Here is what I purchased seed-wise:

Lettuce mix - of all varieties they sell (but not a salad bowl mix, just lettuce)
Pak Choi - Choy Sum
Chard - Erbette
Spinach - Oriental Giant
Chinese Kale - Gai Lohn

I originally planted lettuce in my quick start thingees, then moved some outside. I must have added some seeds to that empty space instead of just moving around lettuce (like I thought I did). I thought I'd decided not to plant any of the Choy Sum, but eventually found something growing in my lettuce that looks like Choy Sum, yellow flowers and all. (I haven't shown any pics of that yet.

Now, outside, I decided what the heck. Let's try the gai lohn anyway. Sure, it's better in the fall and it might bolt, but I can harvest it young, etc. So, I planted spinach and gai lohn outside in late April and did write down where I planted it and which type was in what space, etc. About the same time, I plant chard inside, also noting it.

So, the only thing I didn't note was the choy sum that I planted inside, but have now clearly identified.
Out of all the plants I listed above, I've planted all of them.

The spinach? Just where I put it. The gai lohn? Right next to it, looking very much like a brassica with its first true leaves. The choy sum? Where I moved it, with its yellow flowers. Chard? Also where I moved it, with it's red stems.

So, that leaves me with this mystery plant that clearly is NOT the pak choi-choy sum I planted - doesn't look anything like it, growing habit is different, size and color not the same. It's clearly not the gai lohn. It's clearly not the chard or the spinach....and, it doesn't look much like a lettuce, either. It also leaves me with yet another very young green that looks just like chard (I admit, it's only got 2 tiny true leaves, but it has red veining and crinkly leaves) yet is it NOT the Erbette I planted elsewhere. And, it's in with the lettuces! Now, maybe there is a crinkly leaf lettuce with red veining or that once it's a bit bigger will look different, but this is just weird to have two things that appear not to belong based on what I planted.

At this point, I've determined the one pictured above is clearly not something I intentionally planted. As several of you have noted, it is likely a pak choi/bok choi of some kind (thanks for the link to the Summer Jean). I suppose they could have made a mistake in my seed packet and mixed two seed types together. What points to that is that both the choy sum I can identify (but intitially thought might be lettuce because I'd forgotten I'd planted the seeds in the lettuce seed starter) and the one I couldn't identify were both mixed in with the lettuces. But, so is the chard-type green that has to be lettuce, because I'd certainly have noticed if I was planting lettuce seeds and three or four chard seeds were mixed in!

Guess I get to wait and wonder how the it grows! Susan, have you grown this variety before? Does it normally form flower buds this early? If you haven't grown it before, I guess we both (and David, too) get to find out!

I'll take pics of the chard-looking lettuce in a couple of days, too, if I haven't figured out what it is.

This is my first time growing it, but I am surprised about the flower buds-oh well.

Yesterday I was thinning turnips in my second garden and noted an arugula plant in the mustard row. Sometimes seeds get stuck in the machinery at seed companies.

Red Sails was an All American Seed Selection in 1985. I started growing it that year or the next and so have over 20 years of experience viewing the seedlings. If you were challenging me to note the difference between Red Sails and Red Salad Bowl seedlings, that might be a different story even though there are some subtle differences in redness.

No question that seeds can get mixed up....but I honestly haven't had it happen before! Now, I'm not the most experienced gardener here by a long shot, but I grew up helping my grandfather in a very large home garden (about 1/2 an acre) each summer as a child, and have done a bit on my own as an adult, including continuing his garden for awhile after he died, but a bit smaller in scale! Over those years, I've probably ordered hundreds of seed packets.....and rarely had something not true. Usually it's an orange zinnia with the pink ones or something, but still very, very rare. Guess there is always a first.

Speaking of lettuce, which I've not grown much in the past, what are the "cut and come" rules. For example, I've seen it written that you can cut just about anything and seen it written that you can only cut chard, spinach and leaf lettuces.

But, what about the other types of lettuce? I don't mean the mow it down with my scissors as you might do with some mesclun greens, but snipping outer leaves? If I snip a few leaves from the outside of a forming cos lettuce, what will happen? Or a butterhead? It seems that most of the lettuces in my mix so far are loose leaf types, but there are at least two different cos (romaine) and a couple butterhead. Since they bunch so loosely, it seems cutting some outside leaves would be fine. But, maybe in inhibits growth in some way.

I'm going on what I've read, and we all know that reading on the Internet must be taken with a grain of something! As noted earlier in this thread, two pictures clearly labeled young lettuce as red sails when it clearly was not. So, if anyone knows a good reason not to practice cutting out leaves of the loosely heading lettuces, let me know. Otherwise, I'm getting out my cuticle scissors and snipping for dinner .

I typically plant butterhead and romaine types and have always just cut off the outer leaves and wait for the inner leaves to mature, just to be cut again. I have salads everyday for about 6-8 weeks in the spring using this method. I believe the looseleaf can be harvested as well but you may want to continue to replant some more seeds. The crisphead (iceberg type) probably should be harvested as a single head. I'm not an expert but it's worked for me...

All leaf and romaine lettuces can have outer leaves trimmed off without harm. In the butterhead class you may want to distinguish between boston with a fairly tight head and bibb with a pretty loose head. Bibb will take having outer leaves removed. Our usual lettuce sequence involves using thinnings first, then the outer leaves and finally whole plants. I try to use two or three plantings several weeks apart to keep a good supply before bitterness sets in or bolting occurs.

An extraneous seed or two in a packet is not uncommon. In many cases it is probably pulled as a weed, though. Totally mislabeled packets are uncommon but do occur. Last year I had a packet labeled for Evergreen White Bunching onions that produced bulbs about the size of creaming onions when the variety is supposed to hold as scallions. Several years ago we bought some seeds that were allegedly Rosa Bianca eggplant but were definitely a different variety with very different fruit. The fruits were excellent quality with high yields although the plants were monsters for a small garden. Under the right circumstances I would grow that variety again if I had a clue as to what it was. The next year I got some Rosa Bianca from a different seed company. I used these seeds for two years and found they did very poorly here. Our climate is just too different from Sicily. The mislabeled seeds were under the Martha Stewart label at K Mart, the only time I ever bought seeds there.

always be accurate if burying seeds Write down every affair you do, every move you make, every berry you plant. It's simple to think, Oh, I'll bethink that I confused X from actuality and buried K, Q and B in its place.