Salad Trays

I keep trays of salad greens on sawhorses of the deck.  They are convenient there.  Most leaf lettuces, celery and pak choy are "cut&come again".  But they do wear out eventually.  I kept the previous planting going from Spring to a few weeks ago.

So it was time to start again.  I dumped all the tray into a large tub.  Very sturdy tub; I think it is used for automotive stuff like draining fluids, but I'm pretty good at seeing other uses for stuff.  Like the 10" wide plaster-smoother that I use to scrape the litter boxes clean.

So I had all the soil in the tub a couple weeks ago and a surprise rainstorm hit.  So I had a tub of mud!  That took a couple weeks to dry out.  And because there was more rain coming, I suspended a tarp over the tub allowing airflow so it could dry out without getting soaked again.

Finally yesterday, I had workable soil again.

I'm missing a few pictures that were so bad as to be unusable.  But they showed a tray in the tub and scooped soil filling it.  I used a small block of scrap wood as a leveler and to lightly press the soil flat.   Then I poked some slight depressions added a seed to each and pilled the holes.  You'll have to just imagine that part 6 times.  😖

But when I was done, I had my salad bed replanted...

 I have small round carrots, pak choy, red romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, and green leaf lettuce.  And it's not the stuff you see in the grocery store.  Red romaine lettuce is never seen.  The red leaf lettuce is bright red from top to bottom instead of just the tips.  The green leaf lettuce is lime green.  

The celery is still growing from before, but I don't get stalks; I grow it for the tastier (slightly bitter).  I grow the pak choy for the leaves (for wrapping the contents of shrimp rolls inside the dough wrappers to avoid punctures).

Most of those plants are moderately cold-hardy, but before it gets too cold, I will bring them inside under lights.  Fresh salad all Winter!