How to Grow Lettuce

Video Transcript

"Did you know that lettuce is a cold weather crop, and it's very frost tolerant, and that lettuce is definitely best when it has a frost, because the freezing temperatures induce sugars and sweetness in the leaves that make them more tender and edible? I'm Jarrett of Stone Soup Farm in Belchertown, and this is how to grow lettuce. Because lettuce is better in the cold weather I recommend planting it only in the spring and in the fall, and to kind of stay out of it in the summer because you're going to have some bitter and tough leaves. The first step is to prepare your seedbed which should be done by tilling and clearing some land like this; getting a nice even seed bed with a lot of tilth or soil fluff in there. And you should take your lettuce seed and maybe a garden trowel like this. If you want densely planted lettuce for baby greens then what I would do is make a row like this about an inch deep, and take some of your lettuce seed and plant it fairly dense; probably about four seeds per inch within those rows, and the rows can be maybe about six inches apart, and then cover with about a half an inch to an inch of soil, water that in. They should come up within about a week. And keep it weed free for as long as you want until they're ready to harvest. If you want head lettuce though, what you should do is mark out those spacings where you're going to put one seed in each hole, and the holes should be about a foot apart each, and that will let you get a nice big, fluffy plant. Take the seeds out, drop one seed in each hole, cover it up the same, keep them watered, keep them weed free, and they should grow to a nice big head in about six weeks to a month. I'm Jarrett of Stone Soup Farm, and that's how to grow lettuce."