I cut it all off and leave about a half inch from the root. I takes about a week to grow back to cutting length again.

ali

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden blog

My grandmother would broadcast surplus seeds of "greens", lettuce, turnip, beets etc. She would have kids cut them all off. Some would be quite small like the tiny leafed salads sold in sacks at the supermarket.

After the daytime temperatures warmed up the lettuce would get bitter and would be sorted out after cutting. Collards would take over the area later in the summer.

Thanks! I am going to start cutting them and enjoying them now.

So I just go out and pick enough leaves for a salad and kinda rotate plats so each still has some leaves. Have I been doing it wrong? Should I just cut the whole thing?

Mtinaz - that's how I do it as well, and it has worked great so far.

MTINAZ- I do it the same way....It does get kinda overgrown if you dont pick them much. I always pick mine for me and my guinea pigs...-cass

I just harvested my first spinach from the garden last night for supper - I just went thru the patch and cut off the largest leaves, leaving the rest.

I couldn't separate out the tiny plants from the batch of mesclun greens I started indoors so I ended up planting them in bunches so I have tons of plants all tightly packed together. I'm going to wait until each "clump" will give me enough for a decent salad, then shear them off and leave the stubs and see what grows back. I might pull a few of the plants at the same time to give them more room to spread. They are packed in those clumps pretty tight!

I planted them last year (just scattered the seed) but I was only growing it for my daughter's pet rabbit. When I saw how easy it was to grow tho, I decided to plant some for myself this year. From now on tho, I'm just direct sowing. The direct sowed stuff is larger than the stuff I started indoors and I didn't have to fuss over it, watering and turning lights on and off!

Has anyone ever scattered seed over their bed before putting it to sleep for the winter? I was thinking since lettuces and spinach can take the cold and wet and be planted so early, maybe I can prepare their area in fall, scatter the seed and just leave it to sprout in the spring?

Lisa