Salanova® Red Butter Lettuce
I order a lot of seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, they’re located right up the road from me. Supporting local businesses is important, as well as supporting businesses like Johnny’s that are employee owned. Johnny’s is a farm supply place, so their offerings are sometimes different than what most consumer market seed houses provide. One of the products I’ve been noticing in their catalogs the last few years is Salanova® lettuce. It’s designer lettuce seed to be sure and comes with the price to prove it. This year I finally took the plunge and ordered one pack of seed. One packet of seeds costs $5.45, it contains a minimum of 25 seeds. Yes you read that correctly, 25 seeds. Of course they overpack, so I ended up with roughly 40 pelleted seeds in my pack.
So far I’ve planted 12 of the seeds and had 100% germinate rate. The pelleted seeds are nice because it’s super easy to plant one seed per soil block. The result is that there is zero thinning. The plants are super uniform in size, which makes complete sense since they’re geared towards commercial production. I noticed that each plant grows at the same rate and is very consistent in shape and size.
Overall, I’m a fan of this type of lettuce. I’ll keep you posted on how well it continues to grow, what it looks like at harvest, and most importantly….how it tastes!
Susy, wow, that is expensive for tiny little lettuce seeds. Pelleted seeds do make planting them easier. The first planting of sweet corn was completed yesterday. Four plantings each two weeks apart is the plan for this year. The next couples weeks will be busy with planting. The weather is finally going to co operate and warm up enough to set out the frost tender plants.
I haven’t been to visit the closest and oldest seed company in the area called Henry Fields. I have been to the Baker Creek Spring festival in Missouri. It is interesting to see where much of the seed is grown for the catalogs. I think in Barker Creek’s case they contract out a lot of the seed selections in their catalog.
Have a great lettuce planting day.
Nebraska Dave
to Nebraska Dave's comment
Good to know. I ordered some Salanova seeds for the first time this year and haven’planted them yet. Looking forward to it though. The proof will be in the tasting. I had fun with Anuenue lettuce seeds from Fedco last year – a fairly sturdy hot weather lettuce.
to Meg's comment
hi, wonder how yours ended up? Taste ? A friend tried this seed & did not have a good germination rate so glad to hear that yours was 100%.Its a very pretty lettuce !
to Nancy Leck's comment
It was good, I think I like the flavor of other lettuces though.
to Susy's comment