Growing lettuce is pretty easy and it’s much cheaper to grow your own lettuce than buy bags of lettuce from the shops, and you are also able to grow lots of different varieties.

How to grow lettuce

To start lettuce off early, I usually start by sowing the seeds in a pot or tray and then transplant them. Fill the pot or a tray up with compost and water it with a watering can and then sow the lettuce seed thinly. Then cover the seeds up with a thin layer of compost.

Keep the compost moist and as the lettuce comes up… you can thin the seedlings out or alternatively keep them all in the pot, and when they are big enough to handle… you can transplant to where you want to grow them. I plant them in wooden planters, but you can use larger plant pots or containers or plant them in your veg patch. It can take anything from 6 to 10 weeks depending on if you are growing heart type of lettuce or salad leaves

To have a steady supply of lettuces or lettuce leaves you need to sow seeds every 14 days from March through to September.

It’s important to water lettuce on a regular basis so that the soil doesn’t get too dry, this is especially important if the weather is hot, as when the soil dries out too quickly the lettuce will bolt (meaning they will run to seed). It will help if you mulch around the lettuces as this will help keep the moisture in the soil.

Leaf Lettuce

Alternatively you can grow leaf lettuce which you can cut the leaves and it will re-grow. This is a very handy way of growing lettuce especially if you have only a small space to grow in. lettuce leaves can be grown in pots containers and in your veg patch, sown just like lettuce