No garden is complete without lettuce! With its crunchy leaves, garden lettuce is one of themost popular vegetables. You can grow garden lettuce very easily and almost all year round. It thrives not only in garden beds, but also in planters on balconies and porches.
Lettuce Varieties
Garden lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is available in different varieties that not only bring variety to your plate, but also to your garden. Depending on the variety, its leaves can be smooth or curly, green, reddish brown or multicoloured. You can roughly distinguish between head and leaf lettuce. Head lettuce includes varieties such as May King, Brown Troubled Head, Attraction, and Iceberg lettuce such as Ljubljana Ice Cream. Leaf lettuce, on the other hand, grows as rosettes. You can harvest it whole or leaf by leaf. It includes Lollo Rossa, Red Salad Bowl and Lollo Bionda.
Garden Lettuce
Depending on the variety, you can sow it starting at the end of January in the greenhouse, in the cold frame, or on the windowsill in flat bowls. Garden lettuce has light buds. For this reason, you should the cover the seeds with very little soil or just gently press them into the top of the soil. Salad seeds only have difficulty germinating if it is too warm for them. Temperatures of 10 to 15 degrees Celsius are generally considered ideal. Anything higher than that will spoil the seeds.; They will shoot up long and thin instead of staying compact and close to the ground. Depending on the variety, the seeds germinate after one to two weeks. Remember to separate the lettuce plants if you have planted them close together. Depending on the variety, weather, and stage of development, you can place the young plants in the bed or flower box from April onwards. The distance should be about 20 to 25 centimetres apart. You can place cut lettuce a little narrower. During this time, cover the young plants with foil to protect them from frost. Unlike tomatoes,, garden lettuce doesn’t like being planted too deep, so make sure that the leaf base remains above the earth’s surface.
Of course, you can also plant lettuce directly in the garden. Depending on the variety, you can start sowing in April under foil and continue until September. Our tip: sow new rows of lettuce every two to four weeks, so you can harvest again and again. It is helpful to have a seed belt with the seeds at the right distance from each other, o you can save yourself the trouble of separating them.
Location and Maintenance
Lettuce needs permeable, humus soil and a bright location. Leaf lettuce usually thrives in half shade. On the other hand, head lettuce should be in as much sun as possible. Otherwise, the plant will not form a firm head. However, the location should not be too hot: the lettuce will then tend to shoot up and form flowers. Iceberg lettuce is an exception: it can withstand much more heat. Regardless of the variety, regular watering is essential. After all, lettuce consists mainly of water. If it does not get enough moisture, the leaves become hard and taste fibrous.
Harvesting and Conservation
You can harvest garden lettuce five to eight weeks after sowing, depending on the variety and weather. It can be harvested completely as soon as it has formed a beautiful head. Use a sharp knife to cut the lettuce and stalk just above the ground. You can also let the lettuce grow out and then harvest it completely, or you can harvest it like leaf lettuce: as soon as the leaves are about ten centimetres long, break them off individually or cut them off with a sharp knife. Always leave the heart intact, otherwise the lettuce will not continue to grow. This way, you can harvest lettuce several times.
You want to know more about lettuce? We recommend the book “Now We Have Lettuce!“
