I have finally decided to try the laitue feuille de chêne or oak leaf lettuce from our garden. It was planted end of last year, sometime in October or November. However, for no good reasons, I continued to buy lettuce from supermarkets and not harvest from my garden.
The first batch did not get a chance to survive. A couple of weeks after the seedlings popped out, they were wiped out. Main suspect: snails or/and slugs. To prevent further casualties, I fortified the lettuce bed with blue anti-snails pellets so as to give my second batch a survival chance.
The second batch has survived marvellously. Despite my neglect to harvest earlier, the lettuce has continued to flourish in the last four months. Today, I have decided to harvest the lettuce for my lunch: a simple salad with walnuts, cherry tomatoes, walnuts and feta cheese, sprinkled with shallot vinaigrette dressing.
Since the lettuce was of my own labour (honestly, it was quite simple to grow except the tedious work of saving them from the snails), from my own garden, I was expecting the homegrown vegetable to taste different. To be more delectable, crunchier, sweeter, more fragrant, more of every good thing that can happen to a homegrown plant. Hélas, it tasted just like normal lettuce from the supermarket.
