Growing Lettuce from Seed

When I first thought of growing lettuce, I was discouraged because it looked complicated. Turns out that it is very easy to grow and hardy too. It did very well in the cooler temperatures. In June of 2023, we had some very weird weather here and it was my first experience around spring thunderstorms and trying to keep my garden from being destroyed.

I decided to make a cover for my lettuces out of some cloth to keep the hail from causing any major damage. 

The first storm, most of the leaves were shredded and I decided to harvest what was there so that hopefully the plant could put its energy back into growing again.

With all the amount of work that I put into seed starting and planning the garden, it broke my heart when I saw most of my initial plants suffer from hail damage. All I could do from here on was to cover some of my crops with whatever cloth I had and make to remove it on the sunny days. Thankfully most everything recovered and did very well. For many of the other plants that suffered from damage I popped a ton of seeds in the ground to make up for what was lost. 

Here is my first harvest, which was just enough to have a nice large salad for dinner. My favorite lettuce turned out to be the Green Salad Bowl. 

I bought several packets of lettuce seeds to try all pictured at the bottom of this post. All of them from Botanical Interests. The Salad Bowl Blend had a mix of both green and red salad bowl. All of the seeds that I bought were frost tolerant which I think might be very common with lettuce but I am not sure. From what I have read mostly is that they do grow better in the cooler temperatures and that was true for mine as well. 

As soon as the temperatures warmed up, my lettuce began to bolt and I didn’t have any additional seedlings to fill the place, so sadly I had to eventually pulled them out of the ground. Next time I will make sure to sow in 3 week successions for a constant harvest. On the days that I had an over abundance, I gave to neighbors and my friends. 

I started my seeds indoors about 6 weeks before the last frost and planted them out on May 12.

If you are thinking about growing lettuce and have never tried it, I highly recommend it. Not only is it rewarding to be able to eat fresh salad from the garden, but it also provides some beautiful color and interest to the garden. The other lettuce varieties that I chose from botanical interests were the Farmers Market Blend, New Red Fire, Marvel of Four Seasons, and Paris Island Cos Romaine lettuce.

 
The picture posted below was taken on June 29 and you can see just how much the lettuce filled in the space in just one month from planting.