What You Need to Know About Growing Lettuce at Home

If you have your garden, you have the great advantage of being able to grow your fruits, vegetables, and greens and of producing your organic food.

In the hot season, lettuce is an indispensable ingredient in the kitchen, because we use it in all kinds of delicious and healthy salads. Therefore, we encourage you to take advantage of the space you have in the garden and learn to grow lettuce.

Here's everything you need to know about salad dressing!

About cultivating lettuce

Lettuce grows quickly and is not difficult to maintain. Full of vitamins and much tastier, the one you grow can far surpass the product in the supermarket, in terms of quality.

Find out how to grow lettuce!

1. Lettuce grows best in spring and summer. Salad sprouts withstand very low temperatures and even light frosts, so if you plant the seeds and the weather is an unpleasant surprise, don't worry.

When choosing the soil, make sure that it is loose, fertile, sandy, with as much organic matter as possible. It should be well-drained, moist, but not soaked with water. The right pH for lettuce is slightly acidic 6.0–6.5.

2. The seeds are put in pots and kept in the house for 4–6 weeks before the last frost and the beginning of spring. One week before transferring the seeds from the pots to the garden soil, be sure to add a little organic soil, especially if you do not have such soil in the garden.

3. In the interval of 2 weeks before and after the last frost, when the soil can be worked, put the seeds in the soil, at a depth of 1 cm. Snow can't hurt them, but a sharp wind does. The distance between the seeds should be 10 cm.

4. Water the soil well after covering the seeds with soil.

As for the care of lettuce, you will be happy to hear that it is very easy to maintain and you will have no problem maintaining your harvest. You should be able to plant additional signs every two weeks for a continuous harvest during the growing season.

Fertilization is done three weeks after planting in the garden. Lettuce prefers a soil rich in humus, with a fairly high organic composition. From the point of view of watering, it depends on the environmental conditions. What you need to keep in mind is that the soil should always be slightly moist, but never soaked. It is visible when the plant begins to dry out.

To revive it on hot days, you can sprinkle it with water at any time. The ideal conditions for lettuce involve partial sunlight and a little shade. If you leave it completely in the sun, you may wake up with some dried plants, with which you can do nothing.

Tip: if you have other, taller plants (such as corn or tomatoes) in the garden, it is advisable to plant lettuce in their shade to protect it from the sun's harmful rays, especially during the summer.

Lettuce leaves should be harvested as soon as the plant grows, just before it reaches maturity. You can harvest the leaves before they grow completely, but be careful to leave the center of the plant untouched so that the leaves continue to grow.

When you have completely removed the plant put in new seeds and follow the rules above. Also, don't forget to check the garden daily, because once it has reached maturity, the salad spoils very quickly. Lettuce leaves can be refrigerated in bags for up to 10 days.

Growing lettuce is not at all complicated and allows you to have at hand the main ingredient of seasonal salads, but not only. Lettuce can be used in smoothies and even in soup. Discover here a delicious recipe for lettuce soup!

And because summer is still approaching and you have probably already started to be interested in diets that will sculpt your body for the beach, here is an article about the lettuce diet!