Cut-and-Come-Again Lettuce Sampler

comments (6) November 11th, 2009

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Keep the soil rich
Lettuce likes a fairly rich, sandy loam. I till the beds and let them settle for a week before applying about an inch of well-rotted manure or compost, which I work into the near-surface zone with the stirrup hoe. After harvesting leaves, I revive the plants with a weak fish or seaweed emulsion, or manure tea. I have a siphon gadget on my drip irrigation system that allows me to feed emulsion or filtered manure tea down the lines. Most drip systems can be fitted with something similar.

More info on growing all kinds of lettuce...

Lettuce will grow, if not thrive, in less than ideal soil, but one thing it must have is water, about an inch per week. Drip irrigation puts water only where a plant needs it. Overhead watering wastes a lot of water, and at the wrong time, such as late in the day or in hot, muggy weather, ­encourages fungal diseases.

Slugs love lettuce as much as I do, but luckily they seem to prefer beer. A few saucers of stale beer help them drown their sorrows and themselves. I tried sugar water once, which worked, but my bees liked it even more than the slugs did.

Cutworms can be a hassle, but usually they won’t do too much damage to a fairly dense band of plants. Untilled soil can harbor cutworms, so I till my beds in spring while the weather is still cold enough to kill overwintered cutworm pupae and eggs. If cutworms become a real problem, I add parasitic nematodes to the soil about a week before planting.

How to grow lettuce

	Sources Burpee 300 Park Ave. Warminster, PA 18991 800-888-1447 www.burpee.com The Cook’s Garden PO Box 535 Londonderry, VT 05148 800-457-9703 www.cooksgarden.com Hermosa Valley Garden Seeds PO Box 1409 Santa Maria, CA 93456 877-834-7333 Johnny’s Selected Seeds 955 Benton Avenue Winslow, ME 04901 877-564-6697 www.johnnysseeds.com

In the home garden, sowing every week will ensure a constant and generous supply of lettuce. Each sowing yields three or four cuttings before the plants are exhausted. As a rough guide to quantity, sowing about 3 feet of row every week will keep one omnivorous adult well supplied with salad from spring to fall; a vegetarian might consume twice as much.

Lettuces prefer cool temperatures, but by sowing every week, choosing heat-tolerant varieties, and using shade-cloth tunnels, I can produce lettuce right through my Zone 7 summers. It is easy to keep the supply going right into winter by growing winter varieties in cold frames or tunnels of row-cover fabric. The same tunnels can be used, covered instead with 50 percent shade cloth, to protect heat-sensitive lettuce from summer sun.

And just because it’s hot doesn’t mean I stop sowing lettuce. When temperatures hit the 80s, lettuce seed will not germinate, so I start seeds in flats in a cool room indoors and set the plants in the garden when they have two sets of true leaves.

From early spring until the start of winter, I cut lettuces and keep several salad bowls generously supplied. But lettuce is good for more than just salads. Try it in a creamy soup or wrapped around vinegared sushi rice for a tempting appetizer.

Recipes
Sauteed Shrimp Salad with Curry		Cream of Lettuce Soup		Vinegared Rice and Lettuce Rolls

by Peter Garnham
February 1999
from issue #19

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posted in: Lettuce

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