Lettuce Experiment

We rarely buy lettuce around here but when we do, we don't tend to eat enough to finish the entire head before it starts to go bad. It seems like such a waste to pay for the whole lettuce when we only use a few leaves. With that in mind, I've started buying oak leaf lettuce because they sell it at our local grocery store with the roots still attached. The idea was that we'd use what we needed and plant the rest so it could continue growing for the next time we wanted to use it.

The other week, we bought some lettuce for taco night and ended up going out for dinner a couple time with our friend before he left for Canada. Our poor lettuce sat in our fridge, getting limper as each day passed. I put it in a bowl of water, hoping to revive it a bit and it actually worked! The leaves towards the bottom stayed limp though so I tore those off and threw them out.

We ended up keeping it in the bowl for two taco nights in a row and finally, we only had a little bit left so the other day, I asked Caleb to help me plant it.

We brought the little lettuce plant out to our planter that Andrew had filled with fresh soil.

Caleb dug a big hole in the soil and carefully placed the plant inside.

Then, he covered up the roots and patted the soil all into place. We gave the lettuce some water and called it a day.

Now we'll wait and see if it will continue to grow and provide us with a regular supply of lettuce. We'll probably have to add another plant or two, depending on how long it takes for the lettuce to grow. 

This makes me so excited because I want to one day have an edible garden where we can grow our own vegetables and harvest them as we need them.