Lettuce harvesting

I did a major leaf lettuce harvest this morning. Five 1-gallon bags of lettuce are now in my refrigerator. It's a mesculun mix lettuce, and sadly I don't know which lettuce is which (they were not pelleted seeds, and each kind of seed in the package was not labeled in any way). One of the kinds of lettuce has been completely overtaking the other lettuces, so that is the one that I get the most of. It's a very spicy lettuce. I get so much of it that I've been sharing with friends. I like sharing, it's fun.

I haven't been blogging about the garden the entire time I've been working on it. Currently I have lettuce, snow peas, spinach, squash, bush beans, green peppers, sunflowers (6 varieties) and corn (2 varieties) in the ground. I also planted nasturtiums and marigolds. Seedlings I have left to plant are cantaloupes. I have lots of other seeds to put in the ground this month, I'm trying to decide where to plant them all. Oh, and I have tomatoes too - two in a "topsy turvy" and 3 more in the ground. They are the "Big Boy Hybrid" variety. I also have a hanging pot of chamomile and spearmint, I'm waiting for the chamomile to flower, the spearmint has been slow to germinate.

Florida is in year 3 of a drought. It makes it hard to grow things, but I do the best I can with the little water we have. I'm looking at buying some rain barrels, assuming we actually get some rain at some point I'd like to collect as much as I can. We don't water our lawn (it's all dead). I'm sure our neighbors just love our brown thatch. But you know what? I don't care what they think. I'm growing food with my land, what are they doing?

Here's a picture of some of the lettuce I cut this morning soaking in water in the kitchen sink:



Notice the sink is COMPLETELY full. That's only about 2/3 of what I ended up with after the 2nd trip to the garden. Yay!

Looks like the wind is picking up. I'm hoping for some rain in the next couple/three days. Keep your fingers crossed for us! I have to go make sure my nasturtiums are sufficiently secured...they like to break off their stems and blow away for some reason.

For a treat - here's some nasturtiums to look at:




This is the nasturtium that blew away in the last bit of wind we had. Luckily it grew roots when I stuck it in water for a few days, and now it's back in soil, flowering away as if nothing happened.