Lettuce

Lactuca sativa

Appears in

Seed to Table

By Luay Ghafari

Published 2023

About

This quintessential leafy vegetable might just be one of the most common vegetables in the world. The textures, flavors, and colors of homegrown lettuce simply cannot be found at the grocery store. The ability to harvest a crispy head of romaine from my garden minutes before making a Caesar salad is a simple pleasure that I relish year after year.

Growth pattern: Lettuce is a cool-weather crop that can be cultivated in one of two ways. It may be grown as head lettuce, where a single seed is allowed to mature to form a single head of lettuce (what you would traditionally see in the produce aisle). Alternatively, lettuce may be cultivated as baby greens, where many seeds are sown closely together and harvested when the leaves are still young (what you see packaged as lettuce mixes or mesclun in bags or clear clamshell containers in the refrigerated section of your produce aisle).

'Brilliant app for foodies'

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Part of

Crop Guides

Cool-Weather Crops

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