Tips for growing lettuce

Growing lettuce is an easy and efficient way to grow some of your own food. Here are tips to make sure you get the most out of your harvest.

• While head lettuce is easy to grow, it can only be harvested one time. When looking for lettuce seeds and plants for fresh salad harvests from spring to fall, look for leaf lettuce varieties.
• Popular leaf lettuce options include Black Seeded Simpson, salad bowl, and oakleaf. Seed catalogues and garden centres often have loose-leaf lettuce mixes that contain a variety of lettuce types. These combination packs allow gardeners to grow several lettuce varieties in a small space without spending a lot of money on different seeds. A combination of lettuce varieties in a garden or container also makes an attractive display.

• Lettuce can be started indoors four to six weeks before the last expected frost date and transplanted outdoors after the last expected frost. While lettuce will not tolerate a hard freeze, it will tolerate light frosts. Protect seedlings and transplants any time the temperature is expected to drop below zero degrees Celsius.
• Lettuce seeds can also be sown directly outdoors after the last expected frost date. Scatter seeds on a prepared soil surface in a container, raised bed, or in-ground garden bed at a rate of one seed about every three centimetres. Do not cover the seeds with soil, but leave them on the surface to germinate. Water well and you should see seedlings within a few days.

• To get continuous harvests all season long, allow lettuce plants to reach about 16 centimetres in height before harvesting. Then, only harvest the outer leaves. All new growth comes from the inside of the plant, so by harvesting only the outer leaves, you are only taking off the oldest growth.
• Do not harvest from the same plant every day, but take a few leaves from several plants each day to keep any particular plant from getting stressed.
• Remember that a plant needs leaves to produce food for itself, so be sure to leave enough leaves on the each plant for it to survive.