What's Growin' On 4/26/06: Companion Planting Beets and Lettuce with Onions

Bull's blood beet seedlings between onion rows


Realization Of The Day:
My experimental companion planting in the onion plot is, so far, a semi-success.


Back on April 1st, I planted five rows of onion sets in one of my 4' x 8' raised beds. Between the onion rows, I sowed three kinds of beet seeds and two kinds of lettuce seeds. Usually I simply mulch the entire plot with grass clippings once the onions have poked up.

The idea behind this experiment was that the companion plantings would create shade that would keep weeds from growing between the rows. They would also provide crops in otherwise unused space. (Click here to read the original onion planting post.)


Great in theory, but not so great in reality. I think part of this was my fault, though. Okay, the Bull's Blood beet seedlings have come up nicely, and, as you can see in the above photo, they are doing a good job at blocking out the weeds. I think if I mulch around them and the onions with grass clippings right now, we should be able to stay weed free until harvest.



Detroit beet seedlings in the same row as the bull's blood seedlings


However, further down the row we come to the Detroit beets. The leaves on these seedlings are smaller and the planting is slightly thinner. Thick, nasty grass has sprouted up all over. These are tough little weeds that are not easy to pull up without disturbing the adjacent beets and delicate, shallow onions. And they are so close to the ground it is hard to snip them at the base (which can work very well with some types of weeds). I'll do what I can and then mulch with grass clippings.



Dark Lolla Rossa lettuce strangled by weeds


Next we come to the row of Dark Lolla Rossa lettuce, and it is definitely a troubling sight. As you can see, the tiny lettuce seedlings are being obliterated by the same nasty grass. This is what I was afraid of. I'm not sure there is hope for this lettuce.

If I simply leave the weeds in place, I think they will end up completely covering the lettuce and blocking it from the sun. Although, now that I think about it, that might be good since it warming up, and the lettuce needs to stay cool. I have a feeling, though, that it would just turn into a big mess--plus the weeds have surrounded the onions as well, and that is not good.


I may end up having to hoe up this entire row and feed it to the chickens (nothing goes to waste around here!), but I am still not thoroughly convinced that this was a lousy plan. I have two ideas. The first is to sow lettuce seeds over the entire space between the onions rather than in a row, leaving empty soil on either side. Then it would look more like this practically weedless lettuce bed. I'm actually surprised I didn't do this in the first place. The second is to try a different variety of lettuce--something taller and less compact.


Overall, this has been an interesting experiment so far. One of the rows between the onions is now planted with garlic (in the hopes that I will be harvesting some late spring green garlic) because the lettuce seeds I sowed there did a no-show. I simply hoed the whole space up and started over. (What kind of hoe did I use to do this delicate work? My beloved scuffle hoe!)

I'll also be mulching that entire row (before the garlic even sprouts) with grass clippings. So already there are some new turns in the plan. And we certainly aren't finished yet. It will be interesting to see what transpires in this plot as the weeks go by.


Note: I'm embarrassed to admit this, but after looking at these photos, I think I may have the beet varieties backwards. My notes say otherwise, but it seems like the Bull's Blood would be the ones with the more reddish leaves, since they turn quite purple eventually. I also remember getting a bit turned around when reading my original planting notes (I have a little trouble with north, south, etc.). And here I thought this garden blog would solve all my record keeping problems!

© FarmgirlFare.com

Operation Onion Planting Complete!

Halfway prepared raised bed


Yellow, white, and red oinons ready to be covered with soil. (No reason to pull up the volunteer garlic plants.)


My faithful gardening companion wasn't quite as helpful as when we planted the garlic together last fall.

On Saturday (as planned!) I prepared and then planted one of my 4'x8' raised beds with onion sets. For more about planting onions, click here to read my previously published article on Farmgirl Fare, "Onions In The Garden."

This bed was covered with a thick layer of sheep manure last winter which I worked into the soil with my hoe. This is some beautiful dirt, but it may be a bit too fertile. Instead of large and luscious onions, I may end up with lots of greens and little bulbs. We'll see. A good lesson either way.

And yes, the onions are planted much too close together, but I do that every year. This time I managed to cram in all but about four or five little onions. I'll be thinning and enjoying early spring onions soon!

Usually as soon as the onion sprouts emerge, I mulch between the rows with a thick layer of grass clippings, pretty much effectively smothering all but a few easily plucked out weeds for the entire growing season. But after doing some reading on using companion plants to help block out weeds (and then writing about it as a viable option in the above mentioned article), I figured maybe I should give it a try.

So after covering the onions with soil and tamping it down with my trusty hoe, I marked the five rows with bamboo stakes and then scattered four rows of seeds between the onion rows. Here's what I planted:

Standing on south side of plot looking north:

--Red Onions
--Beets, Detroit, (from Pinetree Garden Seeds '06, 63 days) left half & Bull's Blood (Baker's Creek Heirloom Seeds '05) right half
--Red, Yellow, & White Onions
--Beets, Lutz Winter Keeper (Pinetree '05, 80 days)
--White Onions
--Lettuce, Amish Deer Tongue (BC '04)
--Yellow Onions
--Lettuce, Dark Lollo Rossa (BC '04--didn't have great germination with these when started in containers so sowed thickly just to use them up)
--Yellow Onions

Using my watering can, I soaked the plot with several gallons of water. Then we had a heavy downpour Saturday night--perfect. The ground should be nice and wet.

This will be an interesting experiment. I figure the worst that will happen is that so many weeds will sprout along with the beets and lettuce that I will end up pulling them all up, feeding them to the chickens, and mulching with grass clippings as usual. But the best case scenario? Tender lettuce in a few weeks, baby beet greens not long after that, and three kinds of beets in a couple of months, all from space that usually goes unplanted.

© FarmgirlFare.com

Sorting Through My Seed Stash, Beet Growing Tips, and Planting by the Moon: Garden Journal 2/25/12

Beautiful, nutritious beet greens, all sprouted from one little beet seed (which is actually a dried fruit containing a cluster of 2 to 6 seeds).

You'll find more about growing beets in my previous post, How To Grow Beets from Seed and Why You Should. And Caramelized Beets with Garlic is my favorite beet recipe.

Realization of the Day:

I currently have 13 unopened packets of heirloom beet seeds in my posession—the newest from 2009. I may need a repeat of that 2007 massive seed packet purge.

Organized gardeners probably sort through their old seeds before placing their new seed orders. I finally placed my first seed order for 2012 last Thursday, and then decided to dig out all of my various (actually somewhat organized!) containers of seeds.

Thankfully I hadn't ordered any beet seeds.

More below. . .

Garden Journal 3/11/10: Growing Onions from Purchased Plants - Ordering and Planning

1015Y Texas SuperSweet onions harvested last June.

Realization of the Day:
Despite numerous failures and disappointments in the garden over the years, when it comes to buying seeds and plants I'm still a consummate optimist. I also have no self control. This can be a dangerous combination—and pricey, too.

Last spring was the first time I grew onions from purchased plants rather than onion sets, and despite the fact that many of them bloomed way too early (which means I ended up with some fairly small onions) I enjoyed some delicious success—and still ended up with bigger onions than I've ever grown from sets. (The flowering was most likely due to some wet and wacky spring weather, and I'm hoping to cover this problem in a future post). I wrote a little about last year's onion growing here and here.

For experiment's sake, in late February of 2009 I ordered a total of 10 bunches (approximately 60 plants per bunch) of 9 different varieties of onions (along with hundreds of leek plants—which was a whole other growing adventure I've been meaning to write about) from Dixondale Farms in Texas, the oldest and largest onion farm in the U.S.

I'm running a little later with my ordering and planting this year, but according to Dixondale's shipping schedule, March 9th was their suggested ship date for my area. I also ordered fewer plants and fewer varieties, sticking to the ones that did the best for me last year.

More below. . .

How To Grow Your Own Gourmet Lettuce From Seed - It's Easier Than You Think!

Jericho Lettuce In My Garden On May 8th

Looking for lettuce growing tips? You'll find even more in my post, Lettuce and Arugula in the Garden, with Step-by-Step Photos Showing How To Grow Arugula from Seed in Less than a Month. Happy growing!

I don't think about salad the same way normal people do. I've even started eating it for breakfast. You can read more about this obsession on my food and farm blog, Farmgirl Fare, in a post called On Loving Lettuce.

Lettuce was one of the few things I managed to plant on time this year, and am I glad I did. It's an iffy spring crop in southern Missouri. We usually have at least a few days in the 90s in April—which in itself can be enough to ruin your crop—and it's always a toss up as to whether May will behave itself and stay mild or jump headfirst into summer. This year it behaved, and I harvested gorgeous lettuce every day for weeks.

Today I enjoyed the last of my stash in the fridge, and my salads will now be lettuceless at least until early fall. But if you live in a place where summers are mild (oh how I envy you!), it's not too late to plant, and growing your own lettuce from seed is easier than you might think.


Merveille de Quatre Saisons Lettuce on May 8th

You can tuck a little lettuce almost anywhere, even in spots that are mostly shaded. The only pests that touch the lettuce in my organic kitchen garden are ravaging rabbits. If slugs or snails are a problem in your area, a sprinkling of diatomaceous earth on and around the plants should take care of them.

Diatomaceous earth is an all-natural pesticide made of finely ground fossils of prehistoric freshwater diatoms and can be used indoors and out to kill all kinds of creeping and crawling insects. We buy food grade diatomaceous earth in 50-pound bags and feed it to our livestock (and even the dogs) as a natural wormer.

Don’t have a 'real' garden? Lettuce will happily grow in containers, and since it doesn’t require two feet of soil depth, something short and wide is ideal, such as a plastic dish tub or one of the large plastic bus tubs restaurants use to hold dirty dishes.

For years my lettuce planting schedule went like this: start numerous little flats of seeds in mid-winter, only get around to transplanting a small fraction of the tiny seedlings into individual plugs, then only get around to transplanting a small fraction of those into the garden.

I now take a much lazier approach—and end up with a much bigger harvest.

Simply scatter your seeds onto some nice dirt (compost and manure are excellent soil amendments), then sprinkle them with a light layer of soil or compost, barely covering them. Water well, then sit back and wait, daydreaming of the beautiful bounty you are bringing to life.



You can begin harvesting after only a few weeks—just snip what you need with scissors and leave the plants to continue growing. What I've started doing is sowing the seeds very thickly (which virtually eliminates weeds), then as soon as the plants have a few bite-sized leaves I start to thin them out. And I just keep thinning.

I reach in, pluck out a few of the crowded plants from several different spots, and I swear by the next day the remaining plants have already taken over the empty spaces. You can see in this photo how big the plants with more space have already become.


Newly Planted Lettuce Bed On March 21st

One of the best things about growing lettuce from seed is that there are dozens of varieties available. While the phrase 'picture pefect' rarely applies to my garden unless I’m daydreaming, I did do some aesthetically pleasing, taste-test planting this year.

I divided a 4' x 8' raised bed into eight squares and planted a different type of heat tolerant, slow-to-bolt lettuce in each. I separated the squares with rows of French Breakfast and Easter Egg radishes, which are easy to grow and ready in under a month—just be sure to thin the young seedlings so the rest will have enough room to mature.



Apart from the Red Deer's Tongue, a loose head bib type variety believed to have originated in the mid 16th century, that was a no-show, my experiment was an eye-pleasing, tasty success. The other varieties I planted were Buttercrunch, which I adore; Gentilina, an Italian variety with bright green, frizzled, leafy heads; Jericho, a crisp, sweet cos type bred for the deserts of Israel and pictured at the top of this post; New Red Fire, which has deep red frilly leaves and is extremely slow to bolt; Merveille de Quatre Saisons, a reddish green bibb type; Tom Thumb, which produces a 6" to 7" dark green butterhead in 47 days; and Winter Density, a compact 8" Romaine with thick dark green leaves full of flavor.

Can’t make up your mind which kind of lettuce to plant? Packets of salad mixes are the way to go. I’ve been growing the Rocky Top Lettuce Blend from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for years.



Pictured here is a 4' x 8' raised bed of Baker Creek’s European Mesclun Mix I planted in late March that went gangbusters (the closeup photo further up is of this same bed). The Baker Creek catalog says this colorful mix, which includes lettuce, radicchio, arugula, endive, orach, mizuna, kale, mustard, and corn salad, is a favorite with market growers and has flavors that range from sweet-mild to sour-hot-tangy. Talk about some truly gorgeous salads.

Another easy to grow from seed heirloom variety of lettuce I like is Freckles, which you can read more about here.

The main thing to remember when growing lettuce is that heat is its bitter enemy— literally. Even a few days in the upper 80s or 90s can have your whole crop tasting terrible. This is very, very depressing.

A partly shaded garden spot is best. The next best thing is to create some comfortable shade for your plants. If the thermometer reads 90 degrees in the shade, it'll feel a whole lot hotter than if you're standing in the sun for eight hours. You can learn more about how I create garden shade in Gardening on the Cheap: How To Quickly and Easily Shade Lettuce and Other Plants and Why You Should.

If you’re growing in containers, you can move them in and out of the sun. Put large, heavy pots on wheeled bases for effortless rearranging—a trick I learned from my friend Cookiecrumb, who successfully grows containers of tomatoes on a small condo patio by rolling them into the sun.

On the other end of the thermometer, lettuce is quite cold hardy and can survive light frosts. I’ve had uncovered lettuce subjected to 24 degrees, and it thawed out just fine once the sun hit it. Floating row cover is wonderful stuff that will give you about 5 degrees of protection, while still allowing light and rain to penetrate. If you treat it well, it can last for years. An old bedsheet draped over your plants is another easy way to protect them.

So what are you waiting for? Sow some seeds today, and you’ll be harvesting glorious green bounty in less than a month. Just make sure you plant enough—I’m sure I can’t be the only lettuce overeater out there.

More posts about some of my favorite things to grow:

Freckles Lettuce: Another Easy To Grow from Seed Heirloom Favorite

Favorite Heirloom Tomatoes to Grow—Mine and Yours

Growing Onions in the Garden

Growing Onions from Purchased Plants—Ordering and Planning

Growing Short Day Onion Varieties from Purchased Plants

Harvesting Spring Onions Grown from Purchased Plants

Endive and Escarole in the Kitchen and Garden

Growing Lemon Cucumbers from Seed

Miniature White Cucumbers: An Easy To Grow Favorite from Seed

How to Grow Beets from Seed (and here's my favorite beet recipe)

How To Grow Swiss Chard from Seed and Why You Should (and recipes)

How To Grow Arugula from Seed in Less than a Month

How To Grow Nero di Toscana Cabbage (also called Tuscan Kale, Cavalo Nero, Lacinato Kale, Dinosaur Kale) from Seed and What to Do with It

How To Grow Asian Greens for Fall by Direct Seeding

My Favorite Heirloom Carrots (so far) to Grow from Seed: Parisienne

Tips for Growing & Using Rosemary Year Round

Related articles & resources:

—Gardening On The Cheap: Shading Lettuce & Other Crops

—The Great Compost Cover Up

—The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, 10th Anniversary Edition by Ed Smith. This has been my favorite gardening book for the past 7 11 years, and I highly recommend it for kitchen gardeners of all levels, especially beginners. It's full of wonderful tips and is always the first book I turn to when I have a garden question.

—Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a wonderful family owned company located here in Missouri, sells over two dozen varieties of lettuce in packets of 700 seeds for $1.25 to $1.50 each. Salad blend packets contain 1,200 seeds and cost $2.50. I’ve been buying seeds from them for years. They offer over 1,000 types of non-hybrid, non-GMO, non-treated, non-patented and often very rare seeds from all over the world.

—Pinetree Garden Seeds in Maine is another company I’ve been ordering from for years. They specialize in smaller packets of seeds for the backyard gardener and offer many varieties of lettuce seeds, including a few of their own special mixes. Packets of 500 seeds sell for just 65 to 95 cents each. They also sell all kinds of reasonably priced garden & kitchen tools and gadgets.

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the dirty handed foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Easy How To: Grow Asian Greens Like Bok Choy, Pak Choy, Tatsoi, and Mizuna by Direct Seeding in the Garden

Gorgeous gourmet Asian greens: not available in most stores.

There are many things to consider when deciding what to plant in your vegetable garden: available space and time, soil conditions, time of year, cost of growing vs. buying (or is buying even an option?), how much you love to eat it, past performance, etc. And, perhaps most importantly, does it do well in your location?

When I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to rural Missouri back in 1994, I was surprised to discover that while nearly everyone around here planted a vegetable garden each spring, many people grew nothing but beans, corn, tomatoes, and potatoes.

I quickly learned that with our extremely fickle climate and growing conditions, these are the crops most likely to reward you with a decent harvest, but even they're not guaranteed. Plus people just aren't into stuff like basil and Swiss chard and arugula—which thankfully also do well here.

I've also had good luck growing all sorts of Asian (Oriental) greens, which you can't find for sale in this area. There are numerous types of Asian green seeds available, and it's fun to experiment with different varieties. Large leaf ton ho or wong bok cabbage, anyone? Fast growing mizuna is one of my favorites. It's often stir-fried (I'm crazy about my Lodge cast iron wok), but I love it best in salads.

More below. . .

The Ten Most Popular Posts this Week - and the #1 Reason I Haven't Been in the Garden Very Much

Thankfully it's an extremely cute reason.

Realization of the Day:

I keep composing garden blog posts in my head—but little lambs keep popping out instead. We have 17 19 to date (including three sets of triplets!), with many more on the way. If you need a break from playing in the dirt, you can catch up with all the barnyard cuteness here.

So what do sheep have to do with gardening, besides keeping me from doing much? Sheep manure! You can read all about this wonderful stuff in the post I wrote last season around this time, Using Sheep Manure as an Organic Fertilizer in the Garden (and What's Keeping Me from Working in Mine).

I have managed to sneak in a little quality garden time during the past week in between round the clock barn checks:

Growing Miniature White Cucumbers from Seed in Fall? Maybe.

You can read more about growing these cute little crunchy cucumbers in my previous post, Easy to Grow from Seed Favorites: Miniature White Cucumbers.

Realization of the Day:

This is shaping up to be the year of experimental fall planting.

I generally have pretty good luck growing cucumbers. Between my own harvests (lemon cucumbers are another favorite or mine to grow) and the excess bounty purchased from my Amish friends, I haven't bought a supermarket cucumber in years.

This past spring I started three varieties of cucumber seeds in flats, and for various reasons (the main one being that I probably didn't plant the seeds deep enough and they washed away when I watered them—yeah, duh) I didn't end up with any cucumber plants. Then, again for various reasons, I never got around to starting any more cucumber seeds directly in the ground once the soil had warmed up.

Thankfully some other gardeners around here fared better than I did in the cucumber department, and I was able to buy some nice ones (along with some really bitter ones). But because of the heat and drought (which is what made those bitter ones bitter), the local front yard pop-up produce stands closed down almost as soon as they opened up this year.

Fast forward a couple of months to a desperate me, trying to work on some new summer recipes. I finally broke down and bought some supermarket cucumbers. Blech.

I've already direct seeded two of my 4'x8' raised beds with cool season crops—something I've never done as early as August before—and on a whim, I also stuck half a dozen miniature white cucumber seeds into a bare spot in the homemade greenhouse. A couple of days later, four of them sprouted.

More below. . .

Garden Journal 9/14/10: How To Grow Asian (Oriental) Greens for Fall by Direct Seeding

Asian greens ready to be thinned and eaten on 10-10-06

Realization of the Day:

I don't think the little thrill over seeing tiny seeds sprout up out of the soil will ever go away. At least I hope it won't.

Realization #2:

I've grown a lot of fall vegetables over the years that I've completely forgotten about. Thank goodness I did remember to take pictures of them—or at least of some of them.

Okay, so summer is finally winding down, and gardeners everywhere are busy packing away their garden tools, preparing their beds for winter, and already thinking about next spring. If it's been a good year in your garden, you're also hopefully still picking delicious, vine-ripened bounty.

But what you should also be doing is starting a few fall crops. And this isn't as daunting—or exhausting—as it sounds.