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According to our team member Jana, growing lettuce could not be easier! This favourite salad item seems to be quite hardy and high yielding, and very tasty indeed.
We just got some lettuce seeds from the garden centre and planted lots of them into propagators indoors in February. Then when they got bigger, we got rid of the weaker ones and only left the ones that seemed to be the strongest. When they got even bigger (about 2 months after planting the seeds), we moved them from the propagators to separate pots so they have more space to grow.
In mid-May (but this can probably be done even earlier as lettuce is hardy) we were finally able to move our 4 strongest lettuce plants outside to our raised garden beds. And we couldn't believe how quickly they grew and how big they got! We fertilise them every week with an organic fertiliser. Also we have no problem with slugs, we think it might be thanks to the raised garden beds as we're not using any pesticides or slugs repellents.
Jana's lettuce after moving it outdoors to a raised garden bed - about 3 months after planting the seeds
Time to harvest! We weren't sure when exactly this should be done but when the lettuce started looking really big and with lots of big healthy-looking leaves as pictured on the left, we figured it was a good time to harvest some. This was in mid-June (so about 4 months after planting the seeds).
The trick for harvesting lettuce is to just cut off the outer leaves of the plant (carefully cut them off instead of pulling them off as that could disturb the roots) and keep the 'heart' of the plant in the garden bed with some leaves still left on it. That way the plant will keep growing and producing more leaves (they say you can get up to 4 harvests from a single lettuce plant). So far we've had 2 harvests from each of our lettuce plants so it seems to be working! There was about 2-3 weeks gap between each of the harvests.
After you harvest the leaves, you should wash them properly - we soaked them for about 2 hours in a mixture of water and white vinegar. Then you can let them dry on a tea towel and put them in the fridge where they can last for about a week (based on our experience). Don't put them in the fridge while they're still wet as that way they would go bad faster, so make sure they're dry before storing them.
Jana's first harvest of lettuce - outer leaves cut off from 4 lettuce plants
Letting the leaves soak in water and white vinegar
The 'hearts' of the lettuce plants left in the garden bed to keep growing and producing more leaves
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