Especially for smaller households, lettuce can offer advantages over lettuce, as it can be harvested in more easily determined quantities and eaten fresh. If you decide to sow lettuce staggered every four weeks from around March, you can harvest it continuously in summer and autumn.
How do you sow lettuce correctly?
To sow lettuce successfully, you should first start in bowls or pots with special potting soil or garden humus. As light germinators, the seeds are only thinly covered with sand. After germination and a growth phase of around two weeks, the plants can be moved to beds or balcony boxes with sufficient distance between them.
Choosing the right variety
Plucking lettuce is now available in various varieties that not only have differences in color but also in taste. That's why you should take your personal nutritional taste into account when selecting seeds. The most popular varieties of lettuce in shops and garden beds in this country are:
- Oakleaf
- Baby Leaf
- Lollo Bionda
- Lollo Rosso
- Finger salad
Preparing the sowing
Pick lettuce is usually not sown directly outdoors or in the balcony box, but is initially grown in bowls and pots from the end of February. This is also due to the fact that lettuce is very sensitive to night frosts and can therefore only be grown outdoors from around mid-May. Either special potting soil (€6.00 on Amazon) or your own garden humus should be used as the sowing substrate for the growing trays, as potting soil is usually enriched with artificial fertilizers.
Plucking lettuce is one of the light germinators
Very important for the germination phase of lettuce is a fact that is common to almost all types of lettuce in the world. Since these vegetables are light germinators, the seeds must not be covered with soil to ensure optimal germination rates. To make it easier to create an even moisture balance around the seeds, they can be thinly covered with translucent grains of sand.
Keep the distance between the plants
When the seeds germinate after about one to two weeks, the plants initially need a lot of sunlight and a constant supply of water. After about two weeks they can be transplanted into the bed or balcony box. Even if lettuce does not form heads, you should still ensure a minimum distance of five to ten centimeters between the individual plants for optimal development.
Tips & Tricks
Only harvest individual leaves from the lettuce and leave the strong heart leaves. This way the plant lives on and can be harvested constantly for several weeks.
