Start Your Own Lettuce Garden

Years ago, I wasn't having very much success in my kitchen garden. I had tried (and mostly failed) to grow tomatoes for several seasons and was feeling more than a little discouraged. By the time I battled the neighborhood squirrels for the few fruits that my plants produced, my harvest basket was mostly empty.

That's when my friend Allison handed me a package of Rocky Top Mix Salad Blend from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and said, "You gotta try this."

We scattered the seeds all over our new raised beds in Houston, and kept them watered. In just a few short weeks, there was more lettuce growing than we could eat. We harvested our own lettuce leaves from October all the way to April of that year.

I was hooked.

I popped outside to harvest leaves from all my lettuce plants even when we already had more than enough for our daily salad bowls. I brought bags of homegrown leaves to parties. I gave away leaves as bribes to neighbors when I needed a quick favor.

I couldn't believe that more people weren't growing their own lettuce at home. I would look at those plastic bags filled with browning iceberg or romaine lettuce from the grocery store and feel sad that I had gone so long without tasting a fresh head of lettuce.

Years of my life had been spent believing there were five, maybe six, types of lettuce you can eat and enjoy because that's all I'd ever seen in the grocery store. Now, my world had expanded to include the new delights of crispheads and butterheads and bibb lettuces and hundreds of looseleaf lettuce varieties. And I wanted everyone to experience these same delights for themselves.

So when I started my first garden business, my focus was on teaching my clients how to grow their own salad greens. (That's why the Rooted Garden logo is a bouquet of lettuce leaves.) And now I want to teach you too!

Follow this guide to harvest your own homegrown lettuce in just a few short weeks.

Warning: Prepare to become hooked.

Reasons to Grow Your Own Lettuce Leaves

Lettuce plants and other leafy greens are some of the best plants for beginner gardeners to grow. They don't require a whole lot of space or tending; the few tending tasks they do need are simple things like watering and harvesting often.

Most importantly, the thing we're after—the leaves—is the first thing that the plant produces. That means you can begin harvesting in a matter of weeks because you don't have to wait around for the plants to produce flowers and then fruit.

You can even grow lettuce plants on a shaded balcony or a windowsill indoors. Lettuce plants only need 4 hours of sun per day to produce for you.

In addition to getting so many leaves for very little space, time, and effort, you'll also reap the following rewards:

-More Variety

You'll be able to choose from hundreds of different varieties, including delicious heirlooms that are most likely never available at the store because they don't package and ship well.

-Better Flavor

You'll enjoy leaves when they're at the peak of their flavor and nutrition. Freshly harvested leaves really do taste so much better than ones that have been sitting in a plastic box for two weeks.

-Less Waste

You won't have to feel wasteful when another plastic bag of lettuce gets pushed to the back of the drawer and forgotten. Only harvest leaves when you need them so they never go bad.

-Reduced Risk

You won't have to worry about E. coli outbreaks and lettuce recalls.

-More Leaves for Less $$$

You'll harvest lettuce for months from just a couple packets of seeds that cost about $3 each—way more leaves than you'd get from a plastic container of spring mix that costs you twice as much at the grocery store. 

My Favorite Types of Lettuce to Grow

There are hundreds of delicious and colorful heirloom lettuce varieties to try. Like I said, most of these don't travel or store well, so the only way you'll get to experience them is by growing them yourself!

Here are just a few of my favorite types of lettuce to fill my garden with different colors, textures, and flavors:

• Black-Seeded Simpson Looseleaf Lettuce
• Buttercrunch Butterhead Lettuce
• Freckles Lettuce
• Little Gem Mini-Romaine
• Lollo Rossa Lettuce
• Lunix Lettuce
• Marvel of Four Seasons Butterhead
• Mesclun Mix
• Paris Island Cos
• Rocky Top Mix Salad Blend

Rocky Top is still my all-time favorite! It’s the perfect mix of red lettuces, speckled lettuces, and green lettuces—and they're all so sweet you don't need much salad dressing.

Some of my favorite seed companies to buy lettuce seeds from are Botanical Interests, High Mowing Seeds, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (great for warmer climates), Johnny's Selected Seeds, and Baker Creek. By the way, this is not a sponsored post. These are just great seeds that I've enjoyed and think you might like too.

If you're shopping around for seeds, look for organic and non-GMO. For a container lettuce garden, look for seed packages that say things like "baby greens” or “container variety” so you know the plants will do well being grown in tight quarters. Keep in mind that red varieties tend to tolerate heat better, but they're also more difficult to germinate and grow.

What Are Pelleted Lettuce Seeds?

Lettuce seeds look like teeny tiny footballs and can be difficult to handle.

Most seed companies will offer at least a few of their lettuce varieties in pelleted seed form. Pelleted seeds have a special coating to make them larger and therefore easier to handle. The one caveat is that the coating shortens the lifespan of the seeds, so you'll want to plant these seeds within one year. If you plant your salad garden like I do, that shouldn't be a problem!

You can see the difference between normal lettuce seeds and pelleted Lunix lettuce seeds below.

Lettuce Plants Love Cool Weather

If you've ever tried to grow lettuce before and found these plants difficult to grow, it was probably an issue of timing. Lettuce plants are in the Aster plant family, and these guys enjoy cooler weather. The ideal cool season weather for growing lettuce plants is between 55 and 75 degrees.

Lettuce plants can still survive if you plant them in colder temps (I've planted when it was still in the 30s before), but just keep in mind that they might take a bit longer to germinate and then grow. On the opposite side of the temperature spectrum, you probably won't be able to push the boundaries quite as much when things heat up. Lettuce plants often bolt, or go to seed, when the weather warms and the days lengthen.

For many of you, the best time to grow lettuce will be during what I call the shoulder seasons: in the fall nearing your first frost date and in the spring a little before your last anticipated frost. Waiting until all chance of frost has passed will mean you miss out on several weeks, if not months, when you could be harvesting leaves.

When I lived in Chicago, I planted lots of lettuce in September and then covered them with frost protection in October and November. I did the same in reverse in spring as soon as my soil was workable. If you're in a warmer climate like I was back in Houston, then you can grow your own lettuce all winter long.

When in doubt about whether or not you should plant some lettuce seeds, just look at a calendar and your average high temperatures for the next couple of months. You can plant lettuce as long as you have at least 45 days ahead of you when the temperatures are expected to stay below 75 degrees.

Growing Lettuce in Warmer Weather

Once your weather warms up (temps are consistently over 80 degrees), you can plant special lettuce varieties that are made for warmer weather. These varieties include but are not limited to Jericho romaine, Coastal Star romaine, and many red lettuces.

You could also use the space you'd dedicated to growing lettuce and turn it over to more heat-resistant greens like New Zealand spinach (which is actually not spinach but really delicious and easy to grow), arugula, mizuna, and purple mustard for the next couple of months.

Lettuce Plants Are What I Call Short and Small Plants

That means they don't take very long to grow to maturity, and then don't take up very much space. That even goes for bigger lettuce types like romaine. Below ground, the root systems stay pretty shallow, and above ground, the leaves have a compact, upright growth habit. 

That makes lettuce plants perfect for growing in container gardens or along the edges of raised beds, basically wherever you have available space. 

If you have limited space, such as a sunny windowsill or small patio, you can grow lettuce in a planter that's at least six inches deep and about a foot wide to give you enough harvests for a dinner salad each week.

If you have a spot where you could install a 4 ft. x 4 ft. raised bed, you could build your own Super Simple Salad Box. Here's your step by step to build a salad box like the one pictured below.

And for those of you who already have raised beds installed, consider growing lots of lettuce plants in your corners and along the edges.

Your lettuce garden needs to receive at least four hours of sunlight to give you good leaf production.

How to Set Up a Lettuce Container Garden

Many would-be-gardeners think they have to go big or go home in the garden, when really, there are so many easy and small ways that allow you to get started right away. Seriously, you'll be amazed at how many leaves you can get from even a small container.

I love to grow my salad greens in a little planter I made from a steel container. Check out the article below for my favorite containers to use to grow lettuce and other small leafy greens. We also have a Container Garden series on YouTube if you prefer to watch me set up these different options.

I also love to grow herbs and salad greens in larger steel planters that I set on casters so that I can roll them around easily. Follow these steps to set up your own raised container on wheels.

Once you've got your container or large steel tub picked out, follow these three steps to prepare it for planting.

Step One: Add Drainage Holes

If your container doesn’t already have drainage holes, you’ll need to add some every 6 or so inches using a drill. Lettuce plants prefer the soil to stay moist, but they really don't like to sit in water for too long.

Step Two: Put Weed Barrier Cloth at the Bottom

Cut a piece of weed barrier cloth a little bigger than the width and length of your container and place it at the bottom so that the edges fold up the sides of your container just a bit. The purpose of this cloth is to prevent soil from washing out of your container every time it’s watered and making a mess. 

Step Three: Fill Your Container with the Best Soil

Lettuce plants will grow great in a mixture of potting soil and compost.

Moisten the soil mix a bit before putting it in the container—that way, your seeds will encounter wet soil from the beginning. (When seeds are in a dark space and feel wet soil against the exterior of their seed coat, they start to wake up.) 

If you’re starting with seeds (which we recommend), then fill your little lettuce planter all the way to the top. Use a small hand rake to aerate the soil surface. Seeds need little air pockets in the soil so that their roots can spread out. 

Here are some lettuce planters I put together for a salad garden workshop. I used popsicle sticks to label the different lettuce types growing inside.

Growing Lettuce Indoors

You can put your container of lettuce plants in a windowsill indoors or on a table right next to a window. You’ll need to rotate your container often so that your plants get sunlight from both sides. Again, your plants will need at least 4 hours of sunlight per day. 

If you don't have a sunny spot and prefer to use grow lights, you'll want to leave these artificial lights on for at least 10 to 12 hours a day and keep them close to the leaves of the plants.

I recommend moving your container to the kitchen sink when it's time to water. Your container will need about one inch of water per week.

Overall, you’ll get more success if you can put your container on a patio or porch and let nature help you grow these greens.

How to Grow Lettuce in a Raised Garden Bed

If you already have raised beds set up, lettuce plants are ideal for growing along the edges of your raised beds. Thanks to their shallow roots, you can also plant lettuce around taller plants like kale and Swiss chard.

Do a little bed prep before sowing your lettuce seeds.

First, add a fresh 2- to 3-inch layer of compost to top of the planting area to give nutrients to the new plants and replenish what the previous season's plants have pulled from the garden. I love mushroom compost, but any fresh, finished compost will do. You could also add some earthworm castings. Lettuce plants love growing in organic matter, and this addition of compost is typically enough to feed your new lettuce plants for their entire time in the garden.

Then, use a hand rake to prepare the soil for planting. Break up any soil clumps by rubbing them between your hands, remove any leaves or old plant debris, and level out uneven parts. You don’t want your tiny lettuce seeds slipping and sliding if there’s rain. The soil should be nice and sifted and ready to plant. I use my gloved hands to press the soil a bit to flatten it. You could also use a flat board and slide it over the top of the soil.

Plant Lettuce from Seed

Although you may see lettuces sold as starts at your local nursery or garden center, you likely won't have much luck successfully transplanting them into your salad garden. Even if they survive, you won't see as much growth as you will from the ones you plant directly by seed into your garden.

Plus, lettuce plants grow so quickly that it just makes sense to save your money and only buy plant starts for something that will take longer to reach maturity and spend a longer time in your garden.

Tools to Help You Plant Lettuce Seeds

Since lettuce seeds are so small, it's helpful to have a couple tools handy to help you sow these seeds in your garden. (Head's up: these are affiliate links, which means I earn a small profit if you make a purchase.)

-Spice shakers, Condiment bottles, and Seed dispensers

My favorite tool to help me separate small seeds is a spice shaker with a perforated cap. I save empty containers from my kitchen spice rack and then clean them well. You can simply fill the container with seeds, replace the cap, and shake over your planting area. Each tiny hole is the perfect size to let one tiny lettuce seed out at a time, which helps you get a better dispersion of seeds than you would from just sprinkling seeds from your fingertips. 

Another option would be a condiment bottle with a narrow tip. You can save these or buy empty containers from discount stores. The opening at the tip is very small and only allows a few seeds to come out at one time.

There are also seed dispensers, which are readily available at garden centers and big box stores.

-Dibber

I'm a collector of dibbers. My favorites have markings on the side to help you know the depth of each indention you're making. You could also use a chopstick to make very small holes or dig shallow trenches when you're planting.

-Seed Spacing Ruler

My favorite ruler has small holes along the markings to help me place seeds with precision. You could make your own or use a measuring tape. These tools will help you plant in nice, long rows if you're planting lettuce seeds strategically.

Lettuce Plant Spacing

You can sow your seeds in rows and give them space to grow to their full potential, or you can scatter your seeds and let them grow super close together for frequent harvests. 

How you plant these seeds really depends on your harvest goal. Are you looking for large leaves or even full heads of lettuce, or do you want to be able to cut outer leaves daily for your salad bowl?

Spacing for Looseleaf Lettuces

If you’re growing looseleaf lettuce and plan to harvest often, the plants can be kept small. One looseleaf lettuce plant requires between 9 and 16 square inches. Spacing each lettuce plant about 3 inches apart allows you to grow about 16 plants per square foot, while spacing them 4 inches apart means you can grow about nine looseleaf lettuce plants per square foot.

If you’re wanting these plants to grow to their full size before harvest, you’d need to space them more like 4 or 5 plants per square foot.

In the picture below, the looseleaf lettuce seeds were scattered and sown very densely. These lettuce leaves need to be harvested when they're small and taken frequently.

Basically, the closer you plant your lettuces, the more often you need to harvest.

Spacing for Head Lettuces

For head lettuce, the spacing needs are different. Head lettuce plants like romaine and iceberg need a longer period to grow and flourish in the garden. And obviously, these need more space. If you're after a full head, then you'll need to give each about 81 square inches of space.

I prefer to harvest frequently from the outside of my head lettuces while they're forming instead of waiting for the full head to form before I take my first leaves. I find there's a higher chance of running into pest problems the longer you wait to take those outer leaves from head lettuces.

If you promise yourself you'll be diligent about harvesting outer leaves often so that there's still good air circulation around each plant, you can space your head lettuces every 8 inches or so. Pictured below is a friend's garden. You can see how she's planted her romaine fairly close together and has harvested many of the lower, outer leaves already.

Another Way to Visualize Lettuce Spacing

You could also use what I call my plate planting method, which is how I visualize how much space each plant will need in the garden. You'll just need some items from your kitchen.

Here's how that works:

• A spice shaker is typically about 1 inch in diameter. The imprint left on the soil from pressing the bottom of a spice shaker down is how much space you should give each little lettuce plant if you're planting densely and plan to harvest small leaves frequently.
• A condiment bowl or sauce dish is usually about 2 inches wide. If you were to set a condiment bowl down in your garden, this is how much space you should give each lettuce plant if you want to harvest leaves when they're about 2 to 3 inches wide.
• A teacup saucer that's about 4 to 5 inches in diameter represents a smaller type of lettuce that you can allow to grow to its mature size.
• A salad plate that's about 8 to 9 inches wide is perfect to represent a head lettuce like romaine or iceberg (fitting, right?). Planting this way, you can expect to fit about 9 large heading lettuces like romaine per square foot of garden space as long as you plan to harvest the older, outer leaves regularly. This will ensure your plants still get plenty of air flow.

I find it's really helpful to actually bring these items out to the garden and press their rims into the soil to make indentions to figure out how I can plant my lettuces. Play around with mixing different-sized plates in rows. If your plate has to hang over the edge or overlap another plate, then you don't have enough space for that plant.

You can use a dibber or chopstick to make a very shallow indention in the soil where you intend to plant each seed (basically in the middle of the plate outline).

2 Different Ways to Sow Lettuce Seeds

You can follow the spacing guidelines I detailed above (planting strategically), or you can basically scatter your lettuce seeds and plant them densely. Again, the more densely you plant them, the more frequently you'll need to trim them and harvest.

I recommend not wearing gardening gloves when planting since lettuce seeds are so tiny. They're much easier to handle with bare hands, so get ready to get your hands a little dirty!

Let's look at each method in more detail.

How to Sow Lettuce Seeds Strategically

This is the best method if you're hoping to grow large leaves or full heads of lettuce. You can plant your lettuces in neat little rows and give them a lot of space to grow to their full potential, or you can plant your seeds in rows but keep them closer together to harvest at a younger age.

Follow these steps to sow your seeds strategically.

Step One: Figure out your spacing

I like to use a planting ruler or measuring tape to help me space out seeds in staggered rows that are at least 2 to 3 inches apart.

Step Two: Sow seeds

Take your seeds in one palm and use the thumb and pointer finger of your other hand to pick up a couple of seeds at a time and drop them one by one into each hole by rubbing your fingers together. (Or use one of the seed dispensing tools I mentioned earlier.)

Leave all the seeds uncovered until you're done.

You can either plant all your seeds now, or you can skip rows and return in a week or two to add more seeds between your planting lines. This way, you’ll have plants coming up at different times. This method gives you continuous harvests if you plan to harvest entire heads. 

Step Three: Ensure Each Seed Has Good Soil Contact

Once all your seeds are planted out, used your hands to pat each seed gently into the soil. I say gently because you still want the soil to have some air pockets—that's key for seed germination. But it's equally important that each seed have good soil contact. Without good soil contact, seeds might pop up when they're watered and then end up with a root growing above the soil, which makes for spindly plants that will never be very successful.

Take some extra compost and sprinkle it over the planting area.

Make sure to mark your row with a plant tag so you remember where you've sown your seeds.

How to Scatter Lettuce Seeds

You can sow lettuce seeds by sprinkling them over the soil. They'll end up growing very close together, so just know that this means you should harvest frequently to ensure plants have access to air and sunlight. (On the plus side, sowing seeds thickly gives you great soil cover once the plants are growing. The lettuce leaves will shade the soil, helping it retain moisture instead of quickly dehydrating due to evaporation.)

Here are the steps to scatter your seeds:

Step One: Sprinkle Lettuce Seeds

Take seeds in your hand (or use one of the seed dispersing tools I mentioned) and lightly sprinkle seeds over the soil like fairy dust. The goal is to get pretty even distribution.

One technique that I've found helps with seed dispersing is to mix your seeds with a little bit of paver sand. Having the sand mixed in will show you where seeds have landed and where they have not. I used this method a lot when I allowed my children to just directly throw the seed anywhere on the salad garden.

Use a hand rake to help spread out seeds if you end up with a little cluster. 

Step Two: Cover Lettuce Seeds with Compost

Once your seeds are on the soil, pat them down gently with your hand to make sure each one has good soil contact.

Grab a little bit of soil and sift it over your salad garden seeds by rubbing your palms together. If you still see some seeds on the surface of your garden, that’s okay. It's the depth of the lettuce seeds that matters most. If these guys are buried too deep, they’ll struggle so hard to reach the surface that they’ll be too exhausted to actually grow by the time they get there. 

This is the planting method I used in the raised bed below. You can also see the garden hoops and mesh I used to protect these greens (more on that in a bit).

Keep Lettuce Seeds Well Watered

Water your seeds in gently. Try to mimic a soft rainfall. You don't want to recreate Niagara Falls and wash away all those tiny seeds you just placed.

Lettuce seeds must stay moist. If they're allowed to dry out, they'll never germinate. Checking the moisture level in the soil daily is really important until the plants pop up from the ground. After that, you still don't want to let the soil ever dry out completely.

How to Protect Your Lettuce from Garden Pests

You have one more task to do the day you sow lettuce seeds—whether you sprinkled them with abandon or placed them carefully—and that's to protect them from bugs like slugs, cutworms, and very hungry caterpillars (plus the occasional squirrel or bunny).

The best way to protect your lettuce plants is to cover your raised bed or container with tulle fabric or garden mesh immediately after planting. I honestly just bought some yards of tulle from a local fabric store. You can buy something more sophisticated like garden netting, shade cloth, or row cover, but I found tulle is pretty inexpensive and very easy to use, and I continue to use it season after season.

Young plants are particularly vulnerable to pest pressure, but a mesh barrier will give them all the protection they need from the get-go. The cloth is porous, so it lets air, water, and sunlight in, while keeping pests out. You'll drape the fabric over some hoops to keep your plants from getting smooshed and then hold the fabric in place with landscape pins.

You'll leave this mesh on from the day you plant your lettuce onward so pests never have the opportunity to enter the space. (This makes coming out to harvest and pulling back the mesh to reveal what has been growing underneath extra exciting!)

I've found so much success using this simple form of organic pest control. You don't want your plants to end up looking like this, right?

Garden mesh has the additional benefits of helping to lock moisture in your raised beds (which your lettuce plants will love) and providing some shade and shelter from strong winds and other harsh weather conditions. You can use these same hoops to support frost cloth if you're getting frost this winter to extend the life of your lettuce plants.

I also recommend planting some garlic bulbs or chives near your lettuce garden. Many of the smaller pests that like to munch on lettuce leaves are repelled by the scent of plants from the onion family.

Your main tending tasks when growing lettuce will be thinning, watering, pruning, and using covers to extend your season.

You might be thinking What about fertilizing? Growing your lettuce plants in great, nutrient-rich soil is often enough to get them through their entire lifecycle in your garden. If you ever feel like your plants could use more nutrients, add some compost. Compost is really my go-to fertilizer. It'll help your plants grow healthy and strong in the most natural way possible.

How to Thin Lettuce Plants

Thinning your plants can lead to fewer problems. The more airflow you can create around your lettuce plants, the less chance you have of mildew, rot, and even pest infestations. You’re also going to get more production from your lettuce plants—both bigger leaves and bigger harvests.

In the picture below, these little lettuce plants have all come up from seed, and things are looking a little too tight! The stems are barely even a half an inch apart—not the three to four inches that we really want to go for if we're looking for good leaf production. This is a perfect case for thinning your plants.

You'll thin your plants about two weeks after you plant your seeds. Just come in with a clean pair of scissors and snip the extra lettuce plants at their base, right at the soil level. Leave the strongest-looking plants to grow. You can bring what you snipped inside to enjoy as microgreens!

How to Water Your Lettuce Garden

Lettuce is like 80% water or something crazy like that, so water is critical for successful salad gardening. It's especially important to keep the planting area moist while you're waiting on lettuce seeds to sprout.

After that, it's best to check the soil frequently and never let it dry out. Gently stick your fingertip into the soil down to the first joint. If it feels dry a few inches down, it’s time to give the plants a drink.  If the soil feels moist and not really wet, then the soil moisture is perfect. 

If your planter is in direct sunlight, you’ll need to water more often. That's also true for containers that are on the shallow side, which tend to dry out faster.

Lettuce plants love consistency. There are some vegetable plants that like to get really wet and then get really dry. Lettuce plants are not those. 

Instead of giving lettuce plants a deep watering once a week as you might other plants, consider watering your greens a little every single day or every other day to keep the soil moist but not soaking, especially on warmer days. In total, your plants will need about one inch of water per week, but this amount changes depending upon the temperature and the evaporation rate of the location where you are gardening.

The simplest way to keep your plants happy is to keep a watering can right next to your plants and let it fill with rain water. Use that rain water during dry spells to water your lettuce plants. As you water, take care not to disturb the tiny seeds and seedlings as they begin to grow. Mimic a gentle rainfall.

Also, lettuce plants love to have water directed straight to their roots. They really don’t like their leaves getting wet so much, and they love to be watered in the morning instead of in the evening. When you water plants in the morning, you’re giving them the resources they need to survive the warmth of the day, and you also give the soil time to dry out so it doesn’t welcome as many pests in the late evening.

Here's how to troubleshoot common issues with watering:

-Soil surface looks dry

If your soil surface is dry and your seeds have not germinated yet, you’re going to need more water. Soil surface is not always an issue; it’s really the root area that we are more concerned with. But if it’s at the beginning of your planting season or even in the middle and you have seeds in the garden waiting to grow, then you’re going to want to be sure the soil surface stays wet.

-Lettuce leaves are wilting

If your leaves are wilted, it’s because more water is necessary for your plants to thrive. You'll want to increase the frequency and most likely duration of your watering. If it seems like no matter how much water you add to the garden, the soil just won't hold it, add some compost to the surface.

-Lettuce leaves are turning yellow

This likely means they are getting too much water. For yellow leaves, you will want to pull back on the watering time and duration for your salad garden. If it seems like your soil is holding way too much water and plants are rotting or mildewing, try adding some paver sand to your soil to improve drainage.

How to Prune Lettuce Plants

Of course, the most important kind of pruning when it comes to leafy greens is just harvesting often. We'll get to harvesting in a minute. But seriously, one of the death knells for a salad garden is someone not going out there and taking from it regularly. Whatever you do, make sure you have a schedule to get out there and enjoy the plants that you worked so hard to put in your garden.

If you see any yellowed or damaged leaves, use your fingers or a clean pair of pruners or scissors to remove them individually. Watch the plant very carefully in the coming weeks to make sure there aren’t more issues that you didn’t notice at the time.

If the whole plant is starting to look bad, not just a couple of leaves, it's best to remove the entire thing. Leaving it in your garden when it's past its prime will only invites pests and disease. Remove the plant by cutting it at its base, just above soil level. These plants should be thrown away instead of added to your compost bin if you have one.

How to Use Covers for Your Lettuce Garden

The right cover can help you extend your growing season, which means you can harvest yummy lettuce leaves for longer.

Lettuce plants can handle a light frost, but it's still a good idea to cover them with frost cloth or a floating row cover if you know a freeze is coming. If you're growing lettuce in a container, you could always move the container indoors overnight.

Once the weather warms ups, you'll want to provide some shade whenever the temps exceed 80 degrees. Try to give your leafy greens some afternoon shade, perhaps by growing taller plants next to them or moving their container to a covered patio.

Shade cloths draped over your lettuce plants can protect them from the full force of the sun and trick them into thinking it's still their ideal climate for a while longer. (If you're shopping around for a shade cloth, look for something that blocks 30 to 60 percent of the sun's rays for your lettuce plants.) These cloths will also lower the temperature underneath by as much as 10 to 20 degrees and help to retain moisture.

It might seem hard to believe, but you can begin cutting tons of delicious lettuce leaves within a month.

The best time of day to harvest from your lettuce plants is early in the morning. Lettuce plants are at their sweetest after a full night of sleep. One of my favorite rituals is having a cup of coffee and then heading out to the garden with my salad spinner to do a little bit of cutting before the kids wake up.

Remember, leaves are edible at each stage of growth. You can eat the leaves when they are "baby leaf" size, or you can wait until they grow bigger. Smaller leaves are going to be sweeter and softer, while larger leaves are often crunchier.

Let's look at how to harvest looseleaf vs head lettuces.

How to Harvest Looseleaf Lettuce

It's absolutely possible to harvest lettuce without killing the plant. We do this by taking a couple of leaves from the outside of each plant and then giving it time to recover and push up new growth from the center of the plant. Plants that you can harvest like this are called cut-and-come-again.

When plants are new and fresh, you don't want to harvest too heavily from them just yet. Just take one or two outer leaves. The golden rule of harvesting is to never take more than a third of any one plant in one week. And of course, you don't want to take more than you need for your next meal because that just-cut taste is really what salad gardening is all about!

If you have enough lettuce plants, you can take a couple leaves from some one day, and then return the next day to take some leaves from different plants. Throughout each week, I slowly make my way through the whole salad garden, and I can do this for as long as the weather stays below 90 or so and the leaves keep growing. 

How to Harvest Head Lettuce

You can actually treat head lettuces like romaine as a cut-and-come-again salad green by cutting leaves one at a time. Always take the oldest, more mature leaves from the outside of the plant to encourage your plant to keep producing new leaves from the center. Give each plant time to recover after a harvest before you cut more. Continue harvesting from your larger lettuce plants this way during the optimal growing window because this is when the leaves will taste their sweetest.

Once you're nearing the end of your growing season, you can harvest the entire head using a sharp knife, the serrated blade of a hori hori, or the edge of scissors. Grab the leaves like you're gathering hair for a ponytail, and cut the entire plant at the base. This is how the heads you purchase at the grocery store were harvested.

When you harvest the entire head, you may get one more set of leaf growth from the center of the plant as long as you've left the roots in the soil. It's unlikely, however, that you'll get a lot of further production.

Once you harvest, you want to thoroughly soak the head of lettuce in water. This is to make sure that there are no slugs or snails hanging out in the interior leaves. For head lettuces, the likelihood of little pests hiding in-between the leaf layers really increases. Check before you eat so you don’t end up with some accidental escargot in your salad.

How to Store Garden Lettuce

It's always best to harvest only when you can enjoy your leaves right away.

As soon as you harvest, you want to put those freshly cut leaves directly into a salad spinner or strainer and take them inside to rinse them thoroughly. Spin or pat them completely dry.

If you do plan to store the leaves, the trick is to make sure they're fully dry before they spend any time in the refrigerator waiting for you to eat them. Otherwise, they can spoil real fast.

Once you're sure the leaves are dry, put them in a sealed container. I like to cover them with a paper towel before closing the container and putting it in the fridge. How long these leaves will stay fresh varies vastly depending on which type of lettuce you're growing.

How to Enjoy Your Garden-Fresh Lettuce

Harvesting your own salad greens makes it super easy to create gourmet salads at home. Some of my favorite garden salad ingredients to toss in include chives, curly parsley, carrot and radish slices, and even edible flowers like pansies and marigolds.

My go-to dressing is a delicious blend of equal parts EVOO, apple cider vinegar, and honey, plus a pinch of salt.

You'll notice that salads for lunch suddenly seem way more appealing!

Why Is My Lettuce Bitter?

Bitter leaves are a sign that your lettuce plant's time in your garden is coming to an end.

Along with the change in leaf flavor, you might also notice the plant sending up a tall central stalk and beginning to form flowers. The plant is doing something called bolting, and this typically happens because the plant is experiencing stress.

Wait, plants can feel stressed out?

Oh yeah. There are many things that can cause a plant to feel stress, including the weather changing, the plant running out of space to reach its full maturity, and the nutrients in the soil being all used up and not replenished. Instead of putting more effort into their own survival, stressed-out plants will instead begin looking toward the survival of their kind. They do this through producing seeds.

You can delay your plant from producing seeds a little bit longer by cutting off the seed stalk, but the bitter taste will still remain. That's because lettuce plants reaching the end of their lifecycle release this sticky milk-like substance made of natural latex called lactucarium. The name comes from the Latin word for milk: lactus. (The botanical name for lettuce, lactuca, actually stems from the same root, so this milky sap literally gave lettuce its name.)

Bolting plants are past their peak of flavor, and while the leaves are still perfectly safe to eat, you'll probably find them too bitter and rubbery.

Don't feel bad. This is just a natural progression in the lifecycle of a lettuce plant. You can pull your lettuce from the garden and replace it with something that will grow better in your current garden conditions. Or you can leave your bolting plant in the garden, enjoy the lettuce flowers, and collect your own lettuce seeds for next season.

Where Do Lettuce Seeds Come From?

When a lettuce plant bolts, it forms lots of beautiful yellow or white flowers that will attract pollinators to your garden. Each of those flowers will eventually produce seeds. Assuming the lettuce plant wasn't a hybrid, the seeds will remain true to the original plant.

Here's how to save your own lettuce seeds:

• Place a small mesh bag (think those organza bags you might store jewelry in) around the seed head to collect any falling seeds and keep them from being carried away in the wind. The seeds are ready to be harvested once the flower heads are fluffy and dry. The seeds themselves should be brown.
• Cut the entire lettuce plant at its base, right at the soil level, with a clean pair of pruners. Tie a piece of twine around the stem and hang the plant upside down in a cool, dry place. The seeds will need to be completely dried out before you collect them or they could form mold.
• Once the seeds are dry, shake the bolted lettuce plant over a bucket to collect the seeds. Pick through the bucket and remove the chaff (the debris from the dead plant). Store the seeds in a paper sack, a jar, or an envelope. Be sure to label with the date collected and the type of seed. Your seeds can potentially last up to five years.

It's incredible to think that a plant that grew from a tiny seed has now produced hundreds more of itself. To me, this is like making lemonade when life gives you proverbial lemons. You can't have delicious leaves from the plant anymore, so you might as well get some seeds out of it, right? The seeds you save over time will become better and better adapted to your particular growing conditions, which means more garden wins for you!

I Challenge You to Start Growing Your Own Greens

Join me, my friends, on my mission to instate a salad garden revival. We’ve got so many resources here at Gardenary to get you started and to make organic salad gardening in your own little raised bed or container super simple.

I wish I could be there when you cut leaves for your first homegrown salad. From now on, your harvest basket might not have as many shiny red tomatoes as when you first imagined becoming a gardener, but it can always be full of green leaves.

Here's to many bountiful lettuce harvests and delicious organic salads in your future!