Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Some people like to start their dinner with a salad
of lettuce or other leafy greens. Ancient Egyptians
and Romans also liked to have lettuce with their
evening meal. But they served it at the end.There
are hundreds of kinds of head and leaf lettuces. The
most popular ones include head lettuces such as
iceberg, Boston, bibb and romaine. Experts say
lettuce is one of the easiest vegetables to grow in
your garden. The best time to plant the seeds is
during cool weather. Advisers at the University of
Illinois Extension say the best planting temperature
is fifteen degrees Celsius. Lettuce seeds are small,
so do not place them too deep in the ground. If you
plant some seeds every week or two, you will have
harvests ready to eat one after another.You can use
a seed tray to start the seeds indoors. The
container should be deep enough to hold at least
three centimeters of soil. There should be about one
centimeter of space between the soil and the top of
the container. The container should have holes in
the bottom so extra water can flow out. Drop the
seeds over the surface and cover them lightly with
soil. If the soil is not already a little wet, give
it some water. But not too much -- you do not want
to drown the seeds. Next, cover the seed tray with
paper. Remove the paper when the seedlings have
grown up far enough to touch it. You can transplant
the seedlings into the garden when they are about
two to three centimeters tall. Do this when the
weather is not too hot and not too cold. Take out as
much of the soil as you can with the seedlings.
Plant them in the ground in a hole that is bigger
than the lettuce roots. Keep the plants watered, but
not too heavily. Harvest leaf lettuces when the
leaves are big enough to eat. Pull the leaves from
the outside of the planting so the inside leaves
will keep growing. Or, you can cut off the whole
plant. Leave about two or three centimeters above
the ground so the plant will re-grow. Cut off head
lettuces at ground level. Lettuce is best when
served fresh. Store the remainder in the
refrigerator in a plastic bag. It will last a few
days and sometimes longer. For VOA Special English,
I'm Alex Villarreal. Transcripts and podcasts of our
reports are at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also
comment on our reports. And you can find us on
Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
