The usual term is "consistent soil moisture levels", not "consistent watering". Very different things. ;) It means keep the soil the roots are growing in slightly moist all the time rather than dry/wet/dry/wet etc. That way they have a consistent source of water. But it doesn't mean soaked or drenched, just damp. And it isn't just lettuce but most all garden vegetables. The easiest way is to use a drip irrigation system set on an auto timer so that several times a day the plants receive a small amount of slowly delivered water. Dave

I like how the nursery butchered the name :-) Just for kicks, I actually went to the RHS registry to check if a hybrid with that name has actually been registered. The date could be related to anything. It could be when it last bloomed or it could be the date when it was last repotted. I would tend to think that it would be a last repotted date as I've seen that on tags from orchids at Trader Joes.

One way to ID your plant is to send for the named variety from Optimara. Then grow it along side your NOID. It then should be relatively easy to see if they are the same cv. You can ID it by the foliage as well as the flowers. There are only a finite number of optimaras. There are some that look much alike but the differences would be easy to see in plants side by side--by comparing the foliage as well as the flowers. There are, however, thousands of named AV's and the ID's of many can be impossible, unless the cv is unique. You could also email a photo of your plant to Optimara and see if they can give you a good ID. When I have a plant, of any type, that has no ID I put a note on the label that tells me this. My code is "LL", which stands for "lost label". Then if I am able to ID the plant I still know that my ID was put on a plant that had no name. If I am not certain of the ID then I add question marks. Sometimes I will cover the label with little notes to myself--not very useful when propagating ;). But for trading I would just tell the truth of the situation--and include the URL of the photo on the optimara site. Even when buying named AV's there is always the question of ID. Leaves can sport very easily, and plants can change over time. I once saw a group of AV's entered in a local show, that had been previously distributed to the members by leaves, as a club project. Then the members entered their plants, presumably all of the same cultivar, in a special catagory in their show. There were lots of variation in the flowers from plant to plant. It obviously was not very stable. Jon

Wendy, You are not annoying. This is how we all learn. I'm still learning after well over 50 years of growing plants of all kinds. Continue to ask questions so we can all learn or be reminded of old tips we have long forgotten. Ron