3 Lessons on Lettuce

I harvested a lot of lettuce this year for our daily lunch salads. But I had much higher hopes for my lettuce harvest.

Recently, I discovered that birds had been eating the lettuce seedlings that were coming up. I caught the problem too late though (thinking the seedlings were just taking their time growing) and while I covered up some of the remaining lettuce with row covers, I think it was too little too late. (You can also put something shiny/reflective near where birds are eating your veggies; some people suggest CDs hanging nearby, but I'm sure there is some garden art somewhere that would serve the same purpose.)

Bird netting would work, as well.

Anyway, I do have some seedlings that are doing OK that I planted later on, but because of a few mistakes I made this year so far, I have learned a couple lessons about growing lettuce:

1. Don't plant too many seedlings too early. Actually, early is fine. But I could have - and should have - staggered my transplants in the garden. This fall, when I plant again, I will stagger the plantings, so that all the lettuce I have doesn't get ripe (and later bolt) at the same time. Now I know how few lettuce plants I actually need to make a salad, since they will keep growing if you just harvest their outside leaves.


2. Plant seeds away from the garden and transplant. I had luck with some seeds I planted for lettuce this year, and that lettuce was fantastic. But apparently the birds got hungry and/or discovered my garden late, and thus took out the subsequent plantings. I think if I plant them later on, when the lettuce plant is more mature, I'll have more luck!

3. Find something to replace the lettuce with after it bolts and is pulled out. I recently cleared my garden of the lettuce that had bolted (gone to seed) and thus was no longer harvest-able. I got a lot out of every plant, but as soon as I pulled it out, I wasn't really sure what to replace it with! I have planted some more Nevada lettuce under the cucumber trellis, but now I also have a blank spot in my garden in another area. Still thinking about what I might do there. Maybe I'll just wait and transplant some lettuce when it gets closer to fall to that spot.