The lettuce grows.... and grows .... and grows

Early in this blog (January 26), I showed a picture of Tom in the hoop house covering tiny lettuce plants he had set out with a light, airy fabric called a "row cover" to protect the little plants from the cold.  Remember a "hoop house" is not heated like a green house.  The little lettuce plants survived just fine under their cover and on March 7th, I took the following picture:

Now that the weather has warmed up, the lettuce has really started growing.  On March 30, I took this picture.

Believe it or not, it is even bigger now.  We have more lettuce started outside.  It has started getting too hot in the hoop house for cool season crops, like lettuce.  So, we will be clearing this bed of lettuce out over the next couple of weeks.  We will then plant sweet potatoes in this bed in the hoop house.  Sweet potatoes love hot, humid conditions, both of which exist in the hoop house in the summer.

The black flats of pots you see lined up along each side of this bed are parsley plants that we started from seed back in January.  They were some of the first bedding plants to be moved to the hoop house from inside.  Parsley is a biennial and, once established, will survive fairly cold weather.