Content
- Salad crisp on the table
- When is salad harvested?
- How do you harvest salad?
- What happens after the harvest?
- Tips & Tricks
Salad crisp on the table
Who would not like to have it crisp on the plate? Lollo Rosso and Co. lose their valuable minerals and vitamins after only 24 hours. But how and when do I best harvest the home-grown salad?
When is salad harvested?
The harvest of pickle salad and lettuce can usually take 6 to 8 weeks (corn salad even 12 weeks) after sowing. The lettuce plants should now have reached a size of 15 to 20 cm. So, when sowing in February, the first lettuce harvest can take place in May. Lettuce can also be harvested before it reaches full maturity. That's a good thing, because otherwise you would have a surplus of ripe salad plants that you could not consume all at once.
Care should also be taken to ensure that the lettuce plant is harvested before flowering. Especially with the summer salads, it is often the case that the salad "shoots" in the air and forms an inflorescence. The leaves become bitter and inedible at this stage of growth.
There is an enormous variety of salads, so you can harvest salad almost all year round.
How do you harvest salad?
Here, a distinction must be made between lettuce and picking / cutting salads. Pickle salad is a variation of the garden salad. In contrast to lettuce, it does not form a head but loose leaf rosettes.
When harvesting pickle / cut lettuce, the lower lettuce leaves can be harvested for consumption, but the heart leaves are left to rest so that new leaves can regrow and multiple harvests are possible. Also lamb's lettuce and arugula can be harvested several times, if one takes care not to cut it too short.
With lettuces this is not possible, here one cuts off the entire Strunk near the ground. Using time-shifted seeds at intervals of three to six weeks, however, can be provided for appropriate harvest supply and the harvest period be extended enormously.
What happens after the harvest?
Of course, immediate post-harvest consumption is always best, but lettuce and sliced lettuce, despite its fragility, can be stored for about two days in the refrigerator at about zero degrees Celsius and humidity just under 100%.
Tips & Tricks
Covering winter salads with brushwood / fleece, the salad can also be harvested under the snow.