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My lettuce bolted after 4 days of 95 degree heat in Austin, do I call it or keep trying?
Lost my whole butterhead crop on the balcony last week when that heat wave rolled through and I forgot to move the pots into shade. Part of me thinks I should just switch to heat loving greens like chard, but the other part wonders if shade cloth and a morning water routine would save the lettuce. What do you all do when summer hits hard, give up on the tender stuff or fight it?
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wren_jackson4d ago
One thing nobody ever brings up is the soil temp itself, not just the air. Those pots on a balcony get cooked from the bottom and sides too, so even with shade cloth overhead your roots are basically sitting in a hot tub. Mulching the top and setting the pots inside a bigger pot with dirt or even just a cardboard box around them helps way more than people expect. That said, once butterhead bolts it turns bitter and there's no going back, so calling it on that crop is fair. What worked for me was starting new lettuce seed in July but growing it in the coolest spot I had and harvesting as baby greens at like 3 weeks, before it ever gets the chance to bolt. Chard and Okinawan spinach are solid backups but they're a totally different meal, so it depends if you actually want salad or just want something green.
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