in the old days i would sugar the lettuce

Ok people what happens to lettuce when it gets too old? It becomes bitter is the answer. You can see when you pick it that there is a white milky substance that appears when you rip it and it means your lettuce is done, and if you forgot to plant new lettuce like 25 days ago then you are going to be off the lettuce for a bit.

This is the situation i find myself in... when i was a younger "boy" gardener i thought i was a genius and would just sugar coat the lettuce telling myself that it was still good. It was a good effort and even i have to admire the effort of "not losing"... kind of like when you are down 3-2 in a game and your net is empty for the extra attacker and the other teams best player gets a clear break away on the empty net but you still try to chase them down hoping that maybe just maybe a mistake might be made and you can take the puck and go coast to coast and tie up the score. You have to remember that things that are unpalatable often don't digest well so an extra coating of sugar isn't always the best route to go. That is why gardening is a sport of patience and preparation, and cutting corners and going off the game plan can be a fatal turn of events. Sure we have peas in abundance, onions coming out the ying yang, steady beet and broccoli production, corn coming and the tomato and bean surge is almost on us... but why drop the ball on the lettuce?

Does the man gardener think he is so great that lettuce seeds are going to fall magically from the sky, ahead of time for proper feasting? You would think so with this clearly negligent behaviour... i should not be re-learning these lessons again, but i am and that is the life of a gardener. At this time of year things are going crazy and you are overwhelmed with your bounty and it's all positive thoughts, and that's when you make your mistakes... being on the case is everything when it comes to growing food. So i ripped out the great lettuce patch that was by the strawberry failure in a quick burst of "savage attack weeding" and within seconds the wasps were in there like lions on a water buffalo kill by a waning drinking hole in the dry season... i stayed calm and at one with the plants and the garden keeping on my course and allowed the scavenging to continue and in the end i cleared some land for planting and some wasps are now nighting down with bloated abdomens. As a side note because the great lettuce patch (of mixed lettuce) was planted a little tight at the base of the roots was a woody stalk probably to give the lettuce a Darwinian height advantage... bottom line is that the plants wanted to seed and they didn't need some hungry ass hole plucking at their leaves so they took care of it and became unpalatable, or at least non-gourmet... and in so doing they are now compost... and if a wasp did sting me i would stomp that fucker into a paste.

My daughter, or one of them for that matter, washed the onions with the hose to clean the dirt away and they are now set out on newspaper in the garage to dry. The onion patch on the other side of the strawberry failure is now more cleared ground for beets chard and some more lettuce. Lettuce in Vancouver should grow well into November so there is still plenty of game left...

The garden community has responded well to my travesty... i find if you stand in front of a Gardner and tear a strip off yourself for your lettuce failure there is a good chance that they planted too much lettuce and will offer you a chance to harvest some of theirs. Also now is the time many casual Gardeners go off on vacation and look to a professional like myself to lay down some hard core soakings on their plot... sometimes gardens need soakings and a little thinning.