Third Week: Giving Them new home

Dear readers,

I hope you all did not forget about the surviving lettuce seedling from last time! They all look great and very healthy so it is the time for their moving. Unlike last time where I had to manually put holes onto the lids of bins, this time there is no need for that -- I am going to recycle those plastic bins from last time. So, I just put 1 table spoon of HyrdoFeed and a gallon water to each bin. After that, each net pot was randomly assigned to each spot on each hole. Then, each pot got its name tag.

Second Week: Creating more space for each seedling

Dear readers,

Thankfully, I got seedling(s) from most of the net pots. So, it was the same drill from the last time. Using tweezers, I thinned the seedlings so that each net pot gets one or two seedlings. This procedure will make each lettuce plant grow better since each has enough space for itself. No lettuce plants want to be crowded in one small net pot, just like people prefer to be on less crowded subway than crowded one. Now I just have to wait for may be couple weeks before they grow in size so that I can take measurements.

First Week: Brief introduction and seeding the second generation

Dear readers,

I must inform all of you some good and bad news. The good new is that we successfully got some of the seeds from the previous lettuce salad table project. The bad new is that we could not get the seeds from some of the most successful plants and from some of my favorite plants. However, we must proceed with the seeds which we got currently since not everything will happen as it is planed out, especially with the living plants.
Professor Tom Michaels and I will continue our hydroponics salad table project with the second generation seeds, to verify the validity of our seeds selection, for productivity. And this time, I will plant 30 different varieties from three previous populations (Philosopher, Freedom, and Morton) and 2 varieties for checks (dear tongue and outrageous, which have been proved to be successful.)
The procedure is almost same as the previous one. So, I will just briefly summarize and mention some of the changes that I have made. However, if any of you are curious and want to follow what I did, you can reference the following blog entry (http://dayswithlettuce.blogspot.com/2014/09/introduction-hydroponics-lettuce-salad.html).
This time, instead of using the tags of the same color for all the population, I color-coded as the following:
-pink for Philosopher's (PH)
-blue for Freedom's (FR)
-yellow for Morton's (MOR)
-white for checks

And here is the tip for placing a seed into a net pot. Instead of using forceps, I used a back tip of a ball point pen to make three holes on the perlite inside the net pots. Then, I simply dropped each seed into a hole. Yes, this is easier than holding onto those forceps!
Also, more firm plastic caps were used this time to cover the net pots in the greenhouse, instead of the plastic sheets.

Final Report

Dear readers,

First, I would like to look at the total yields from the harvest and pick out the six highest from each population. (I purposely selected ones that were not diseased.)
From Morton's Mix, D4 had the highest yields (223.17g) followed by A7 (188.39g), C2 (179.64g), B5 (173.46g), A1 (172.17g), and B4 (158.72g).
From Freedom's Mix, A7 had the highest yields (149.22g) followed by B6 (132.82g), C8 (131.64g), A4 (126.55g), A1 (124.52g), and C5 (124.21g).
From Philosopher's Mix, A4 had the highest yields (81.51g) followed by D5 (61.37g), C6 (54.48g), B6 (54.43g), A7 (54.11g), and C8 (52.05g).

From Morton's Mix, the plants with the six highest yields all have non-pointy leaves and also all of them have curly leaf shapes except for one (A1=round). Color varies among these plants but only one of them have red color in their leaves. Except for two of them, they all have dark red speckles. And all of them only had slight mildew damage and only one started to bolt according to the first bolting data. However, all of them had little to moderate milkiness on their leaves, which mean that these plants become bitter after their vegetative stage.

From Freedom's Mix, the plants with the six highest yields do not have a lot in common for their leaf shapes. Except for two, all of them had non-pointy leaves. Also except for two, they all have light to medium dark red speckles. Two of them already started to bolt according to the first bolting data and one of them already had flower buds according to the first bolting data.

From Philosopher's Mix, the plants with the six highest yields all have light and dark green color except for one (C4=dark green). All of them have leafy round leaf shapes. All of them have light to heavy dark red speckles except for one. Also, all of them only had slight mildew damage. However the half of them already started to bolt according to the first bolting data.

Out of 32, three plants are either dead or too small to harvest enough from Morton's Mix. Also, two are diseased. (A3, B2)
Four plants are either dead or too small to harvest from Freedom's Mix. One is diseased. (D8)
Three plants are either dead or too small to harvest from Philosopher's Mix.

If I can choose any plants based just on the taste, I would choose ones from Philosopher's Mix, particularly ones with dark green color leaves and leafy round shape, since they have thicker leaves (which I think are more suitable for salad plates) and have mild sweetness (which means they can go along with variety of other toppings in a salad bowl.)

Also, we are not sure if we can get all of the seeds from the plants that we want, since some of the plants with the highest yields did not flower yet.

Thirteenth Week: Final Observation

Dear readers,

This is my last observation for this year.
I took data on the heights (in nearest cm) of plant stems, whether there were flower buds, and the milkiness of the leaves (1=none, 2=little, 3=moderate, 4=excessive) by cutting the leaves. Bitter the leaves, having more milkiness on the leaves.

Twelfth Week: Observation

Dear readers,

Today, I continued to take data on whether each plant is bolting and if it is, whether it has flower buds or not.

Except for few, almost all of the plants were bolting. And the two from Freedom's Mix had already flower buds. (Which is not a good thing since we want to breed plants that will bolt as late as possible.)

Eleventh Week: Observation

Dear readers,

We stopped harvesting since last week because some of the plants already existed their vegetative stage. (One even had flower buds already.)

Instead, today I took data on whether plants were bolting or not and the severity of mildew damage (1-slight damage, 2-moderate damage, 3-severe damage) on each plant.

I note a plant as bolting, if I could see the stem between its leaves.

All of the plants were suffering from slight to severe mildew damage. (If this happens, you should try to clean up the bottom leaves so that you can avoid further infection.)