Much like homegrown tomatoes, lettuce from your backyard vegetable plot always seems to taste better than those packages from the grocery store. Not only that, lettuce is a very easy crop to grow.
While you can grow lettuce from starter plants purchased from your local garden center, it's often more economical to start your own plants from seed. Lettuce is one of just a handful of garden crops that can be started by either planting the seeds directly into the garden in the very early spring or late summer (when the weather is cooler), or by sowing seeds indoors under grow lights in late winter and then moving the transplants out into the garden when they're 4 weeks old.
If you want to take your gardening efforts one step further when it comes to your lettuce crop, you can get even more economical by collecting and saving your own lettuce seeds each year. This is especially easy to do if you grow non-hybrid, heirloom lettuce varieties.
Though lettuce is not exclusively self-pollinating, it is primarily self-pollinating, so saved seeds from non-hybrid, heirloom varieties almost always “come true.” Which means that most of the seeds you save from any given lettuce plant will produce the same variety of lettuce as the plant the seeds were originally saved from. Unlike some other garden crops, even when lettuce does cross-pollinate, the resulting plants are often just as tasty, even though they may be different from the parent plant in appearance.
If you want to ensure exclusive self-pollination and zero cross-pollination in lettuce, simply separate each specific variety by 20 feet.
To save seeds from lettuce plants, allow the plants to come into flower. Each lettuce head will “bolt” and grow a tall flower stalk from the center of the plant. Small yellow flowers will develop on these branched stalks. Tiny native bees, wasps and other pollinators can regularly be seen feeding on the nectar and pollen of your lettuce plants.
A few weeks after flowering begins, the seed heads will form. White, fluffy “down” develops where each flower once was. As the flower stalks begin to yellow and then brown, give the clusters of “down” a tug and the seeds will pull right out of the spent flower heads. At the base of each piece of “down,” you'll see a small, elongated seed. Depending on the variety of lettuce, the seeds may be brown, black, grey or white.
Once you've harvested a bit of seed, spread it out on a paper towel in a warm, dry room and let it sit for about two weeks to allow the seeds to further dry.
After the two weeks have passed, pack the seeds into labeled envelopes or small glass jars. Store the packaged seeds in the fridge or another cool, dry location. They'll last up to two years.
If you don't want to collect and store your own lettuce seed, you can also choose to let the seed naturally drop in the garden. Seeds that are naturally shed in the summer will go on to germinate on their own either later that fall or the following spring. Though their placement will be random, it's a great way to have a continual, self-sowing lettuce crop each year.
Horticulturist Jessica Walliser co-hosts “The Organic Gardeners” at 7 a.m. Sundays on KDKA Radio with Doug Oster. She is the author of several gardening books, including “Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden,” “Good Bug, Bad Bug,” and her newest title, “Container Gardening Complete.” Her website is jessicawalliser.com. Send your gardening or landscaping questions to tribliving@tribweb.com or The Good Earth, 622 Cabin Hill Drive, Greensburg, PA 15601.
