Last year the lettuce seed got washed out twice by heavy rains. I thought they germinated better indoors if they were covered? I put domes on the flats yesterday, the lettuce got some afternoon sun so a little condensation - think I'll need to take the dome off this afternoon? But the seed is planted so shallow, I don't want it to dry out. I do have a south-facing window by the basement door, I can move them down there if you think that's better but not in the next week - they might freeze. Or since my racks are still set up from trying to ripen tomatoes, I can set up grow lights on those (farther from door), but I don't know if lettuce needs *that* much light before it germinates. I really should have planted peppers yesterday - hard to believe our last frost is only a little over 2 months away (I hope). Winter weather advisory tonight - tomorrow's high will be 17, low 6 with wind chills below zero. Sat might be warm enough (though rainy) to melt more snow and seed more flats out in the garage - I'll do the peppers then. Maybe tatsoi too, depending on what the 10-day forecast says. Right now looks like snow early next week, waiting to see what the first day of spring will be like!

Hi, I don't have everything you are looking for, but I have about half! plus some of the other stuff on your want list. I have leftover cucumber seeds from this year (Burpee: Sweet Burpless Hybrid). This vine was super productive for me! I have some seeds from the cukes I grew, but they probably won't come true to seed. You can have whichever you like--commercial or homegrown. also Buttercrunch lettuce (forms heads) and Grand Rapids lettuce (leaf)--both delicious, I'm still harvesting the Grand Rapids from my fall planting! commercial plus Danvers Half-long (American Seed) and Little Finger (Burpee) carrots. commercial I also have onion seed, but they grown into big yellow onions (Candy Hybrid from Lake Valley Seed) not little green ones. commercial. Have bell pepper seed (red, purple, orange) from the garden have Blue Lake Pole Bean (very prolific!) commercial also have Brandwine tomato (big, delicious, red heirloom) from the garden. Let me know if you are interested in anything! I will email you also. I'd love to trade for the Delphinium and/or hot peppers.

Lettuce and spinach are some of the earliest seeds I WS. I usually start my WSing now (last week of Jan/ first week of Feb) and I will probably do lettuce next week. If you are going to WS, you can do them now if you'd like, but you don't necessarily NEED to do them now. Mine all transplanted very well also. Can't help much with direct sowing as I don't do a lot of that. :) Dee

Hi Daniel, I think it would be easier to figure out why the lettuce is not doing well inside and then correct that. Trying to transplant lettuce outside this early during a winter in which we're having recurring ice/snow storms and below-average temperatures would be less likely to be successful even with the use of 2-liter plastic bottles as cloches. To grow lettuce indoors under lights, you need to keep the lights so close to the lettuce plants that the lights and lettuce almost touch. Having the lights any higher than that will cause the lettuce to stretch and get leggy, which is what I assume you're referring to when you describe your lettuce as 'wimpy'. I have found that lettuce grown indoors benefits from having the grow lights left on 24/7, which is not true of most other vegetable seedlings grown indoors. I generally give most indoor seedings between 12 and 16 hours of light indoors but lettuce needs more. If you can, try to keep the room where your light shelf is slightly cool....maybe around 60 degrees. Lettuce grown indoors under lights can grow too fast too quickly in a very warm room. As far as transplanting lettuce outside in the cold winter weather and covering the plant with 2-liter bottle cloches, my best guess is that it is unlikely to be very successful. You'd have better success with a larger cold frame or a low tunnel (PVC supports bent into U-shaped hoops and covered with clear 4 to 6 mm plastic) that would shelter the young lettuce plants from the wind, frosts and freezing temps. The problem with plastic cloches is that they can be blown off the plants by a strong wind and plastic doesn't hold heat very well. You can use 2-liter bottles and milk jugs as a cloche over seeds that have been winter-sown and they usually work quite well for that purpose because they protect the plants from wind insects and animals so the seeds can sprout. They also help trap a little heat and that might keep the seed/soil slightly warmer than unprotected seed. With lettuce that already has sprouted and is growing, though, the 2-liter bottle cloches are likely to hold too little heat at night to keep the lettuce plants above 25-28 degrees and they are likely to have that greenhouse effect occurring on sunny days. As you lettuce grows in size, any part of the lettuce that touches the plastic cloches during times when temps are below about 28 degrees likely will suffer cold damage. A small cold frame is better than no cold frame. However the issue with any sort of season extender is that small ones are harder to heat/cool evenly and it is much easier to keep the temps at the right temperature with larger ones. The same thing is true of greenhouses....very small ones can overheat much more quickly than larger ones. I personally wouldn't attempt to put a heater of any sort in a cold frame if any part of the cold frame is combustible for rather obvious reasons. To make a long story short, I'd just say that my husband and son both are certified professional firefighters( DH is also a certified peace officer and actually works as a public safety officer) and we all three belong to our local volunteer fire department---and you simply would never believe how many structure fires are started by small heaters in confined spaces including small dog houses and poultry coops. Even heaters with thermostats (and thermostats can malfunction too) can heat up a small area fairly quickly and cause combustible material to burst into flame. I asked my son his opinion of putting a heater in a 3' x 3' x 1' cold frame and he said he considered it a risky move and he wouldn't do it. If I was in your situation right now and keeping the young lettuce plants indoors under grow lights were not an option, I'd put them in a unheated cold frame or in a hot bed (essentially a deeper cold frame where the lowest layer of 'soil' is fresh manure that releases heat as it decomposes). If in a cold frame, I'd spray paint the 2-liter bottles black, fill them with hot water to start out with, and place them on their side in the cold frame so their longest sides are exposed to the most sunlight and I'd use them as solar collectors. The water-filled bottles will collect heat during the day and release it at night as they cool. Even with a cold frame, you need to have a self-opening vent to allow the top to 'pop open' if the sunlight heats it up to a certain poing or you need to manually open the cold frame every morning and close it every evening unless the daytime temperatures are going to remain very cold all day long. Long-range forecast models show that our part of the country is likely to have another bad round of winter weather in February, perhaps as early as late next week, so planting early is quite a risk based on the current weather conditions, the Feb. forecast models and the knowledge that most parts of OK have had significantly colder than average temps this winter. There have been some years I've pushed the limits and planted early because the weather conditions have consistently been warmer than average, and you often can get away with early planting in a year like that. This is not a year like that. Dawn