Planting Trees and Harvesting Lettuce

Oak leaf lettuce

By the time I fed and watered cattle last night, it was too dark to plant the white fir seedlings that had arrived from the Arbor Day Foundation on Wednesday, so I healed them in.  That means I dug a shallow trench in one of my garden beds, laid the bundle of trees in the trench, covered the root ends with soil and gently watered them in.  They will keep just fine that way for several weeks, but when I arrived home, once again my mailbox was bulging with a package of Arbor Day Foundation trees. This time it was the package of oak seedlings I'd ordered earlier in the month.

This afternoon was one of those gorgeous sunny fall days with temperatures in the mid 50's and a light breeze.  I put on a cotton turtleneck shirt, a cotton sweater, a scarf and a sweat shirt hoody and my heavy work gloves and ventured out to the garden to plant the white fir seedlings.  First I unearthed the seedlings and stashed them in a big water can full of water.  Then I began working up the soil in a spot where I hope they will be happy.  It didn't take long for me to shed the hoody, the scarf and the sweater. What a great day to work outdoors.  It's definitely going to be an Advil night!

Difficult to see with the straw covering but there are 10 little white fir seedlings planted in this bed.

I spent about an hour and a half digging over and weeding out a large mounded bed of what I think was a compost/manure pile about five years ago.  The dirt was easy to dig and the weeds, with the exception of some poison hemlock roots, came out easy.  It should be good, light soil that will drain well, just right for starting young trees. I'll have to deal with the poison hemlock again in the spring.

One of the white fir seedlings
 

Lettuce under floating row cover. I've used this stuff for years and it works great!

I've kept my fall planting of lettuce under floating row cover since we've had some heavy frosts the last week or so.  The oak leaf is doing great and I cut a big basket of it this afternoon.   I always bring my lettuce in the house right after cutting, fill my clean kitchen sink with cold water, then dump the lettuce in the sink and swish it through the water to clean it of any grit or dirt.  Today, for the first time, I found slugs in the water.  I've never had slugs in my lettuce before and they didn't seem to have hurt any of the leaves, but I picked half a dozen of them out of the water and tossed them in the compost bucket. 

Washed lettuce, blotted and ready to put in the frig.

When I'm finished swishing the lettuce I let it sit for a minute in the water. The lettuce sort of floats and the dirt sinks to the bottom. Then I carefully pick the lettuce up out of the water, shake it a bit and lay it out on a clean kitchen towel - a linen like one, not a fuzzy one. Carefully, I blot some of the water off the lettuce with the towel then transfer it to another towel, wrap it up carefully in the towel, put the towel in a plastic T-shirt bag and store the whole thing in my refrigerator's crisper drawer. It keeps that way a week or more.

This towel will absorb a little bit more of the water off the lettuce and help keep in fresh in the frig.

 

One bag ready for the refrigerator, and one more ready for towel number two. Yum, yum!  I should have at least one more cutting before Thanksgiving and then I'll have to go back to the Swiss chard and kale. The calves, who live in the pasture next to the garden, were begging for something green this afternoon, so I gave them some of the chard and the kale. They really liked it.