Do It Yourself: Growing Lettuce in a Nutshell
You don’t have to be an agricultural or greenhouse wizard to grow lettuce successfully. Rather, you can have great success growing fresh and crisp lettuce in your own home garden or in a well tended indoor planter.
Here are four key DIY steps for successfully growing lettuce in a nutshell:
- Choose Your Seeds
Using heirloom seeds while growing fruits and vegetables for consumption ensures robust plant lineage and increases the chances of successful growth and multiple harvests. Good seeds lead to great yummy food!
- Choose Your Space
Outdoors
Lettuce plant leaves are delicate and prefer a shady location without direct sunlight. In fact, you can make use of the bare spaces beneath your other veggie plants or raised beds to grow crispy lettuce.
Indoors
Be sure to provide a well draining growing environment for lettuce plants, such as vegetable growing bags or a stacked planter.
- Planting
Plant seeds according to the individual package spacing and depth instructions. Each type of lettuce is unique in its best-germination requirements. In general, you can plant more seeds than you think is necessary as you can thin out your lettuce patch over time.
- Harvesting
In a location that is out of direct sunlight, your lettuce plants will flourish as long as you provide them with a good watering once a week. Thin out crowded plants and begin to harvest whole heads when they’re full or select leaves when they’re large.
One last thing: How can you make sure that your DIY, home grown salad
- will contain the most delicious and diverse mix of greens? By growing at least three different types, some of the most popular being: Romaine Lettuce, Butterhead Lettuce, and Looseleaf Lettuce.
Alright now, go ahead and grow that delicious lettuce!
By Olivia Turner