Growing lettuce for the home garden – part 1

Leafy greens like lettuce is an important part of most people’s diets, especially as we approach the warmer months and salads return to our menus.

Salad ingredients provide a host of beneficial vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. And because salads are eaten raw, the nutrients aren’t “weakened” by cooking.A leaf vegetable, lettuce is the basis of most salads. The lettuce plant starts off with a short stem. When it blooms, the stem and branches lengthen and produce flowers that look like small dandelions.

This is called “bolting”. Lettuce is harvested before it bolts. People usually think of Iceberg lettuce for salads – so called because the leaves are crisp, clean and “cold”. But I suggest a break from the norm by planting the leafy Romaine or Cos type, rather than the Iceberg.

Iceberg lettuce, or Crisphead, is ready between 55 and 60 days after planting – and all plants are ready at the same time. This means you’ll have to plant every 10 days or so – an inconvenient practice. The nutritional value of iceberg lettuce is substantially lower than leafy or Cos types.

There can be up to seven times more “good stuff” in leaf lettuce compared to Iceberg lettuce – and we eat lettuce for the nutritional benefits.Leafy lettuces are different because they are generally less prone to spoilage by bad weather.

In cases where the soil is too rich in warm conditions, the non-leafy lettuce may bypass the heading stage and go straight to seed. Frost will scorch lettuce heads where many leafy types will be unaffected. Leafy lettuces can be eaten weeks before a head lettuce is ready for the salad bar.

There’s also the convenience of removing leaves from the bottom of the plant when you need them, like a few leaves for a sandwich, without having to cut a whole head. With harvesting, leafy lettuce will continue producing for months, rather than a few weeks.