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Lettuce
Grow these leafy vegetables to give your salad a homemade crunch all summer long.
These seeds are commonly sold at supermarkets and best grown
in springtime. Choose an area on moisture-retentive soil, exposed to
plenty of light. Begin by digging or raking your soil to a fine tilth. To sow push the
seeds down with your finger to only about 13mm deep in rows of about 30cm
apart.
Water regularly in warm conditions and when the soil is dry.
Top tips
– To extend your lettuce supply over the summer, sow a few seeds weekly to spread harvesting
periods.
– Harvest
when young and tender by cutting.
– When
they mature, they will begin to seed which makes the leaves taste bitter. Make
sure to harvest your lettuce before this; you can remove the vegetable from the
ground and grow another in its place.
– Harvesting
the outer leaves encourages further growth.
Key timings
| Jan | Feb | March | April | May | June | July | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
| Plant | ü | ü | ü | ü | ü | ü | ü | |||||
| Harvest | ü | ü | ü | ü | ü | ü | ü |
Our experience
Once harvested, home grown lettuce leaves will not last as long as shop bought salads as these have been aided with chemical sprays to extend shelf life. I’ve found, it’s best to
cut what you want fresh to eat that day!