Grow Your Own Lettuce Bowl!

Need inspiration for a quick, easy spring gardening project? Grow your own lettuce bowl!

This  project is easy-peasy and fun to do with budding gardeners.

Hanging baskets with coco fiber liners are easy to come by at garden centers and big box stores. Add some soil-less potting mix, sow lettuce seeds and cover, water and wait. You won't wait long, as lettuce will quickly germinate in cool spring weather. By snipping the outer leaves and leaving the central ones, lettuce plants will continue to grow, giving you a longer harvest. If you want to prolong your growing season, look for heat tolerant varieties that take longer to bolt- flower and go to seed. If you have lettuce seeds left over from previous years, sow thickly, as germination of old seed is reduced.

Basket culture for lettuce or spinach is ideal, as you can position your basket close to your kitchen door, or easily move it to a sunny spot for best growth. Elevating your crop keeps uninvited four-footed garden guests away from your succulent greens.

So, now what to do with all that lettuce? Check out our upcoming culinary class, Savory Summer Soups and Salads on May 28! Register Here  

Article by Louise D. Clarke, Bloomfield Farm Section Leader at Morris Arboretum

The Philly Bees' Stake in Pollination

by Stephanie Wilson, Endowed Plant Protection Intern

This past fall, I have been running around Philadelphia with an insect net in hand, surveying the wild bees (non-honey bees) in Philadelphia. The very fact that you can grow many vegetables and flowers in the city is because wild bees are present and pollinating. But very little is known about these city slickers and how they survive such a rough habitat: pavement instead of bare ground (which they dig nests in), patches of flowers instead of rolling meadows, and competition from non-native bee species that are slipping in through our shipping ports. This is exactly what I am researching as part of a survey of the flora and fauna that the USGS is conducting.

Stephanie Wilson (L) and Bombus impatiens (Common Eastern Bumblebee) pollinating a gentian Gentiana sp. (R)