Start Your Own Lettuce Farming Business | Growing and Harvesting Lettuce Plants

This is a half-hardy vegetable that you can keep growing all season long by planting one small crop at a time. Days to maturity tend to be short. Garden lettuce is far superior, in both taste and vitamin A content, to supermarket brands.


Lettuce greens are so easy to grow, so nutritious, and so delicious picked fresh from the garden, that everyone should grow them. Grow lettuce in the vegetable garden, tuck it into flowerbeds, or cultivate it in containers. With regular watering, shade from hot sun, and succession planting, you can enjoy homegrown lettuce almost year-round in much of the country.

Although lettuce grows fastest in full sun, it is one of the few vegetables that tolerates some shade. In fact, a spring crop often lasts longer if shaded from the afternoon sun as the season warms. You can grow lots of lettuce in a small space, even a container. Mix it with other taller plants, such as tomatoes in the spring, or grow a mix of different varieties for a living salad bowl.

Give lettuce fertile, well-drained, moist soil with plenty of rich organic matter and a pH between 6.0 and 7.0. To check pH, test the soil with a purchased kit, or get a soil test through your regional Cooperative Extension office. Fertilize and lime according to test recommendations.

If you don’t do a soil test, then assume that the soil isn’t ideal. Add nitrogen-rich amendments such as blood meal, cottonseed meal, or composted manure. Leaf lettuce needs nitrogen to grow tender, new leaves quickly, so fertilize throughout the growing season with

Planting

• Lettuce is a cool-season crop. While you should avoid planting in the middle of summer, you can get multiple crops in spring and late summer.
  
  
• Take extra care if planting crisphead varieties; they will not survive a hot spell.
  
  
• Start seeds indoors 4 to 6 weeks before last spring frost date for earliest crop.
  
  
• Till in compost or organic fertilizer 1 week before transplanting.
  
  
• Harden off seedlings for about a week, and transplant outside between 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after last spring frost.
  
  
• Leaf lettuce: Plant 4 inches apart.
  
  
• Cos and loose-headed types: Plant 8 inches apart.
  
  
• Firm-headed types: Plant 16 inches apart.
  
  
• Water thoroughly at time of transplant.
  
  
• Fertilize 3 weeks after transplanting.
  
  
• Direct sowing is recommended as soon as the ground can be worked. Plant seeds ½ inch deep. Snow won’t hurt them, but a desiccating cold wind will.
  
  
• You should be able to sow additional seeds every two weeks.
  
  
• To plant a fall crop, create cool soil in August by moistening the ground and covering it with a bale of straw. A week later, the soil under the bale will be about 10 degrees F (6 degrees C) cooler than the rest of the garden. Sow a three foot row of lettuce seeds every couple of weeks—just rotate the straw bale around the garden.
  
  
• Consider planting rows of chives or garlic between your lettuce to control aphids. They act as "barrier plants" for the lettuce.
  
  
  

Harvest and Storage

You can harvest leaf lettuce from the outside of the plant, leaving the central bud to grow more leaves, or you can cut the entire plant at the base. Leaf lettuce is ready to eat at just about any size, and you can pick the baby leaves for tender salads. Romaine lettuce forms its characteristic mid-rib before harvest; at full size it makes an upright leafy clump. Bibb types such as Buttercrunch form a loose head; you can harvest anytime, but for the classic Bibb rosette, wait until the lettuce is nearly full size (6 to 8 inches in diameter) and cut it at the soil line.

The same is true for heading iceberg types; however, in warm climates where head lettuce doesn’t make a firm head, you can harvest it like a leaf lettuce, removing leaves as they get large enough to eat.

Lettuce tastes sweetest in cool weather, which is why it is such a great fall crop. As the weather warms, plants will go to seed. By the time they begin to stretch and send out a seed stalk (called bolting), the leaves are bitter. When this starts to happen, harvest all your lettuce immediately and try storing it in the refrigerator, where some of the bitterness may disappear.

See more link:

• Growing and Harvesting Lettuce Plants
• Lettuce Planting, Growing and Harvesting Lettuce Plants

Reference:

• Start Your Own Lettuce Farming Business | Growing and Harvesting Lettuce Plants
  
  

Photo Credits (2)

• Start Your Own Lettuce Farming Business
• Start Your Own Lettuce Farming Business