- As soon as the soil can be worked in the spring, plant one row of seeds. Water and wait two weeks.
- Every two weeks after your first planting, plant another row of lettuce, until you have three or four rows.
- Once your first row is mature enough to pick, pick only the large outer leaves. Don’t pick it all at once and don’t pull up the plants. I use either my kitchen scissors to snip off leaves or I just pinch them off with my finger tips.
- Once you see the lettuce bolting, pull up the whole plant. Remove as many leaves as you can and compost the rest of the plant.
- Try some of the so-called hot-weather varieties of lettuce for summer salads. “Red Sails” is a red-leaf or bronze leaf variety (the red one in the photo above) that tastes great, adds a pop of color to your salads, and is fairly heat-tolerant. Any loose-leaf varieties do a little better in the heat than Romaine or Buttercrunch, which really don’t like heat at all. “Ithaca” is a green-leaf variety that is also slow to bolt.
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When you talked about lettuce bolting I had a lovely picture of a crowd of lettuce plants running hell for leather.
Have to get my lettuce in a store and of course the selection is limited.
LOL! It is a real term (bolting). But I like your mental image better.
Yup, I did know that, but haven’t heard it in years.
I haven’t heard of a few of your tips for coping in warm weather. I like lettuce, but so do my resident snails and slugs. And, I have let some continue to bolt and flower – becoming interesting ornamentals in my front yard garden with the other, well, ornamentals.
Ray