Sowing, cultivating & harvesting lettuce in the garden – helpful tips
The lettuce is nowhere near as monotonous as some might think. There are many different varieties, including the eggplant lettuce which is so popular. If you have the Lettuce in the garden you will always have a healthy and fresh ingredient for a salad, which you can also combine with all other vegetables. But not only that! Sandwiches can also be wonderfully refined with lettuce, so that you not only get an incredibly tasty snack for breakfast or in between, but also a healthy one. Do you like wraps or tortillas? Then be sure to add some leaves of lettuce to them! If you also choose darker leaves, you can get the best nutritional benefits from the lettuce.
Lettuce in the garden – making healthy sandwiches
Today we would like to explain to you how the lettuce is planted, cared for and harvested in the garden. This is namely not a summer vegetable, as is often assumed. It can also be planted perfectly in the cooler seasons, i.e. in spring and autumn, so that you can enjoy fresh vegetables from your own garden in three of the four seasons. The lettuce can be divided into four larger groups. These are as follows:
Lettuce in the garden – the leaf lettuce
The lettuce as a lettuce in the garden is very easy to grow and grows quickly. So you can harvest the first lettuce just a month after sowing. And apart from their healthy side as vegetables, they also look pretty and are downright decorative. This is because the varieties vary in their leaf color. They can have a bronze color or be reddish to dark green.
The butter lettuce as a lettuce in the garden
The butter salad, on the other hand, has a light cream color. The butter salad also differs in its taste. It has a delicate taste and a smaller size.
Lettuce in the garden – the romaine lettuce
The romaine lettuce is also simply called lettuce. The varieties in this group grow in length rather than width.
Ice lettuce as a lettuce in the garden
The ice cream salad also comes from the popular iceberg lettuce. The reason for this is its pleasant taste. The salads in this group can withstand the heat best. Especially the iceberg germinates and grows very quickly.
Lettuce in the garden – when to plant?
You can start sowing lettuce in the garden as early as the beginning of spring. Re-sowing every few weeks guarantees you a regular harvest. However, you should note the following: On the one hand, the lettuce grows in the garden between 30 and 90 days, depending on the variety, and on the other hand, the growth of the lettuce can be hindered at temperatures above 24 degrees. For this reason, you should stop sowing in summer or you should choose a location for this vegetable patch that will receive partial shade in summer from other plants. However, the sun must not be completely absent, because it is needed for growth. Regular watering is also required. Care should be taken to ensure that the soil always remains moist. If you stopped sowing for the summer, you can continue with it in late summer or autumn. It’s just that the earth has cooled down. Plan the last seed so that you can harvest the lettuce in the garden before the first frost.
Lettuce in the garden – how to plant?
The lettuce in the garden is best planted in rows. They should be a distance of 7 to 23 cm from each other. Choose a depth of approx. 6 mm. For lettuce from the butter lettuce and romaine lettuce group, a gap of 15 to 20 cm should be left. The iceberg is a little more challenging. This needs a distance of at least 30 cm.
You should fertilize the soil right at the beginning. Then repeat the whole thing after a month and a half. It is also important to regularly remove the weeds around the lettuce in the garden. With regard to the pests, the known ones are possible, but rarely occur. The pests include snails, mold, but also birds, deer and hares.
The lettuce harvest in the garden
The great thing about lettuce in the garden is that you don’t necessarily have to harvest the whole head at once. You are also welcome to remove individual leaves by the time the whole lettuce is ripe. Then you should harvest the whole lettuce. If you have also sown a lot of lettuce, you can also cut off about 1 cm from the tip of each head at regular intervals, whereby the leaves will grow back again within a very short time.
Wrap with lettuce and chicken