Growing vegetables for beginners: June 2026 week 3
I go on about lettuce a bit and collecting data about sowing and harvesting times, potatoes and yes, someone has grown enormous Charlottes and the wildlife garden looking stunning.
The plot at the end of this week’s session.
Let’s get the lettuce thing out of the way for the week. 😜
Last week I wrote about how to identify lettuce that are starting to bolt because we have some that are on the brink. This week we looked at the difference between the lettuces that were harvested down to 3 or 4 leaves each week and those that had fewer leaves removed.
The Little Gems (green lettuce) towards the bottom of the picture are starting to close over inside and so are moving towards bolting but the three at the top which have been harvested by picking the outer leaves are still open and not showing signs of bolting yet. So, the way you harvest the lettuce does have an impact on how long you can do so. Pick down to three or four leaves each week and water thoroughly afterwards.
The other benefits of harvesting this way are that the leaves do not touch the floor and so you get fewer slugs and snails hiding in the lettuces. This is yet another anti-slug/snail method of growing that can reduce damage.
Brassicas such as cabbages, sprouts, cauliflowers etc, are also plants where the removal of the leaves that touch the soil will help prevent them from becoming slug and snail hotels.
Nerdy growing information but, we sowed these lettuce on the 23rd of March and took our first harvest on the 17th of May so fifty six days from seed to harvest and four weeks of picking so far, although I am hoping for six plus weeks of harvest. Information like this helps us decide when to sow our next batch of lettuce if we want continuous provision. I am thinking, though, that people might want a break from lettuce!
I sowed my second batch of lettuce seed on the 15th of May, planning for eight weeks of harvesting from the first batch. If I sowed now, 20th June, I would probably have lettuce ready in about 50 - 56 days time which would be early to mid-August.
I am collecting this information for each of the crops that we sow and putting it into a database for the group to access in future years when they want to know how long it takes for each vegetable to come to fruition.
Do you keep data?
Potatoes
Continuing the data theme, we harvested some potatoes today (21/06/26, summer solstice). We had a batch of potatoes that haven’t had a flower at all so it was hard to know if they were ready. Normally I would see a flower and then wait 3 to 4 weeks after that, but not for this crop.
We pulled one potato on the bed the mentors use as a demonstration, and yes they were ready.
One course member won the prize for the largest second earlies and another pulled the purple potato plant, Vitanoire.
Both plants were chitted and planted out on the 29th of March and our first harvest was today, 21/06/26, so 84 days. All our timings will be in 7 day blocks because we only meet once a week and I think we could have started harvesting at least one week earlier. We were (I was) a bit thrown by the lack of flowers.
The wildlife garden
Not veg growing, I know but when I walked through the plot, the wildlife garden looked wonderful.
Full of flowers and quaking grass, some of which will have to be removed. But also there are up to nine newts in the pond although the film shows three playing. Probably not playing but it looked like it! I’m not entirely sure what the dead thing is. Frog?
Happy gardening.
Joy
I think I might be a nerd too as I’d find the table of how long for sewing to production really useful both for harvesting and succession sowing times.