How to grow Lettuce

Lactuca sativa · leaf lettuce

Fast cool-season leafy green. Tolerates light frost, grows in beds and containers, and bolts to seed in heat and long days.

Quick facts

Type	Vegetable
Family	Asteraceae
Light	Full sun
Soil pH	6–7
Frost	tolerates light frost
Soil for sowing	from 5 °C
Germination	7 days
Seedlings ready	25 days
Sowing to harvest	50 days
Where it grows	Greenhouse, Open ground, At home

When to plant

Sow for seedlings about 5 weeks before planting out.

It tolerates light frost: plant out in open ground about three weeks before your last spring frost.

In an unheated greenhouse everything moves about three weeks earlier.

The first harvest comes about 50 days after the shoots appear.

Frost dates · When to plant

Care

Greenhouse

Stage	Watering	Temperature	Feeding
Seedlings	every 2 days	13…24 °C	—
Growth	every 2 days	13…24 °C	nitrogen, 21 days into the stage
Harvest	every 2 days	13…24 °C	—

Open ground

Stage	Watering	Temperature	Feeding
Seedlings	every 2 days	13…24 °C	—
Growth	every 3 days	13…24 °C	nitrogen, 21 days into the stage
Harvest	every 3 days	13…24 °C	—

At home

Stage	Watering	Temperature	Feeding
Seedlings	every 1 days	13…24 °C	—
Growth	every 2 days	13…24 °C	balanced (NPK), at the start of the stage; balanced (NPK), 14 days into the stage
Harvest	every 2 days	13…24 °C	—

Growing notes

Light

Sun in spring and autumn; in midsummer light shade is better.

Soil

Fertile, well-drained, moisture-retentive soil, pH 6–7; avoid letting it dry out.

Care

Keep the soil evenly moist, about 25–50 mm of water a week — in hot, dry weather lettuce bolts and turns bitter. Sow a short row every two weeks for a continuous harvest. Side-dress with nitrogen about three weeks after planting; in containers give a general liquid feed every two weeks. Pick outer leaves, or cut the whole head leaving a 2.5 cm stump that may resprout, before flower stems appear.

Pests and diseases of Lettuce

Sources

Figures checked against these sources.