Signs of Lettuce

The first crop has developed signs of lettuce! So far, all the green you've seen has been seed leaves, or cotyledons. Remember sophomore biology? Monocots and dicots? No? OK, never mind. The point is, the cotyledons are just the first stage of development. The real leaves look different. At left you can see a recognizable lettuce leaf poking out from the sea of cotyledons.

Meanwhile, on the home front, there have been signs of life from the carrots and garlic, too. The carrot tops have grown and sprouted new shoots. Well, most of them, anyway. One of them had some kind of fur of white fungus on it and was dying a slow death. I'm not surprised, since the carrots had spent at least the last six months in a bag in my crisper drawer.

The carrot put up a valiant struggle. But in the end it was clear the fungus was getting the upper hand. So I had to euthanize it, lest the fungus spread and take down the others. Still, under the circumstances, one casualty out of eight is pretty respectable, I think.

And both the garlic cloves sprouted, too! That's the tip of a garlic plant growing to the right of the carrot top in the picture to the right, taken 11/27. They've all grown considerably since this, which I'll show in an upcoming post.