Growing Lettuce
Lettuce can be grown as soon as the soil can be worked in the spring. Lettuce prefers cool weather; hot weather makes it set seeds or “bolt”, sending up a thick, central stem to produce seeds. Once lettuce bolts, it’s bitter – no two ways about it. It prefers cool weather and fares well in the early spring and late fall.
Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.