Having fresh-from-the-garden leaf lettuce is one of the best reasons to have a vegetable garden – and it is easy. Leaf lettuce in different varieties fills all our lettuce needs, so we don’t even plant head lettuce.
Our standard lettuce varieties are Red Salad Bowl and Red Sails, but we throw in mixed lettuce or mesclun to provide variety.
Make sure the soil is dry enough so that it separates when you try to squeeze it into a clump. That usually happens by mid-April.
Planting leaf lettuce in rows is a waste of space. This is the perfect crop for square-foot or mass plantings.
I usually smooth out an area about 30 inches square and sprinkle lettuce seed over all of it so the seeds are about a half an inch apart. This isn’t an exact science, however. If things are too crowded, you can thin some out.
Once the lettuce leaves have grown about 4 inches tall, you can harvest – cutting them about an inch above the soil. The lettuce will continue growing and you can cut again later.
The patches do get tired after a while, so we continue planting new patches of lettuce over the course of the summer – and even into early fall. That way, we have lettuce whenever we want.
The lettuce is great for salads, sandwiches and even decorative greens to make platters look green and bright. Writing this in early April, I am totally ready for it.
— Tom Atwell
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