Is this an exciting lettuce?
This is an F2 population of Jericho Romaine lettuce crossed with Deer Tongue lettuce.
What that means is that last year, I found one strange plant in our Jericho lettuce planting.
In this case strange meant that it looked different from the other plants. And it didn”t look like any of the other lettuce that we were growing.
This planting was from our own farm saved seed so it was probably a cross with another unknown lettuce (unknown at that time!)
That unknown lettuce would therefore be the F1 generation.
???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ????
We flagged the mystery plant and saved the seed separately,
This year, we planted out 30 plants from that seed and waited to see what would happen.
At first it just looked like green lettuce but then the leaves started to take shape and I could see the Deer Tongue characteristics appearing.
Below are the lettuces that made the cut from our Jericho x Deer Tongue lettuce breeding project.
These were chosen for nice heads, interesting leaf shape, and taste. Also that they hadn’t turned to jelly.
I’ve kept 7 plants from the initial 30 we grew out.
Now we’ll see which individuals manage to set seed.
We will collect the seed from each plant individually.
Next year, we will grow out 30 plants from each individual next year.
And then we will select some more.
My next free online workshop is on Thursday July 28 at 2pm Eastern …
