(light music) - Lettuce is hands down
the most purchased vegetable at the grocery store,
and in this video,
we're gonna show you exactly how to grow it
from seed to harvest.
Lettuce, or Lactuca sativa, actually has
a pretty storied history in cultures around the world.
It's been cultivated for at least 2,700 years,
up to maybe 6,000 years or so.
There are murals in ancient Egypt of lettuce,
where it actually wasn't really grown as a salad.
In fact, it was seen more as a sexual stimulant,
as (laughing) when lettuce grows up,
the part of it that you almost never see
when you grow lettuce as a gardener,
it grows erect and it produces a milky sap.
So it was consumed, I guess it was thought
that perhaps there was some sorta crossover there.
And even in Greece, it had a lot of different connotations
for sedatives, digestive aids,
and that's actually where it got the name Lactuca,
lact meaning, you know, milk or lactation
or something like that.
So, a very interesting history behind this plant
and a lot of different seeds and types of lettuce
that you can grow.
If you want more history,
we'll probably do a video on that,
but let's talk now about seeds and varieties.
Growing lettuce, of course, starts with a seed,
but with lettuce, there are so many different varieties.
I wanna break down the categories of seeds
you can get yourself into.
There's a variety for everyone.
Your first variety is gonna be any cos variety,
but it's more commonly known as romaine.
So it's gonna have these sort of long,
spoonish shaped leaves.
They're pretty heat-tolerant
and they're generally a little more nutritious
than some of the other varieties that we'll get into.
And you can use the heart or the interior
after you've stripped away all the leaves
as sort of a celery replacement.
So, a really popular variety of romaine
is Paris Island Cos.
Your next variety is gonna be
any sort of loose leaf variety of lettuce.
So I have a very popular one here
called Black Seeded Simpson.
Loose leaf means exactly what it says.
They tend to be very frilly, a little bit crinkly.
They're very delicious, very beautiful lettuce.
And honestly, experiment with these,
because you don't just have to grow a green one.
They have colors that range the full spectrum.
Next up, we have the boring lettuce, dare I say.
This would be the iceberg style or crisp head style lettuce.
Now this one here, Ice Queen, I have to say
does not look so boring.
The stems of each leaf are really big
and kind of wrap around.
But this is the one you find at the grocery store.
It's iceberg lettuce.
It's crunchy, it's crispy,
it's not super nutrient-dense,
but if you love it, you love it.
Next up, you have butter head lettuce,
and this lettuce right here, Little Gem lettuce,
this is the one you see at all the fancy restaurants,
Gem salad, Little Gem salad.
It's a butter head lettuce.
This is a particularly small style of butter head,
high in nutrients, high in minerals,
but you really want cooler temps
and you want really nice and rich soil for butter heads.
They just prefer a little more love.
There are a few different categories I haven't mentioned,
some unusual varieties, celtuce,
which is a lettuce grown primarily for its stem.
But if you really don't know what to do,
just get a mix.
This is a mesclun mix of lettuce from Botanical Interests.
There are a ton of varieties, in fact,
many I haven't even mentioned
that we've listed down in the description for you.
But now, we need to prepare some trays
and get to planting.
Okay, it's time to actually sow some seeds,
so let's get on down here.
First thing I like to do, of course, is label
because I always tend to forget what I'm growing.
So I've got all my labels here.
We're growing these in transplant trays.
You don't have to do this.
Of course, you could just direct sow
and you'd probably wanna go about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch deep
in the bed that you're planting in.
But for me, especially with lettuce,
especially when you're beginning gardening,
you really want to control
when that stuff goes in the ground.
And so, for me, I do it this way.
So let's go ahead and take out
our Black Seeded Simpson here,
which is gonna go in this one right here.
Now, there's a couple different ways you can sow lettuce.
And if you're curious on how to make seed starting mix,
we do have a full video on that
that I encourage you to check out.
You just want a loose, light mix.
I usually make a tiny little depression
down in the middle of each of these cells here,
and then I typically, especially with lettuce,
it really does depend on the type of seed,
this is quite a small seed,
I'll toss maybe two or three seeds in each hole.
'Cause I just wanna guarantee
that I'm gonna get something to germinate.
Lettuce is a cool season crop.
You really don't want to try to germinate lettuce
in temperatures above about 80 degrees Fahrenheit
in the soil.
So this is a classic spring/fall crop.
Let's go ahead and seed these out
and we'll see you when they start to sprout.
(light music) It's been about eight
to 10 days, and I'm gonna show you an example
of this Ice Queen variety.
You can see we have, looks like about four in this hole.
There's three in this hole, two in this hole.
What you can do now is you can either let these continue
to grow or you can do what's called thinning.
Now, let's take this cell right here as an example.
This is clearly the most developed seedling,
'cause the leaves are the largest.
These are the seed leaves, sometimes called cotyledons,
cotyledons, I don't know exactly how to pronounce it.
Doesn't matter, but what you can do is you can say,
you know what, I'm gonna sacrifice these two smaller ones.
What that'll do is it'll kill those roots off,
'cause now there's no top growth,
and you can say I only wanna have one lettuce per cell
as I grow this up.
Now that's not mandatory.
You could also just leave them
and you'd just get lettuce bunched together
that would be a little bit harder to tease out
and might grow a little bit more stunted, but that's okay.
It's called baby lettuce at that point.
So if you take a look, you can thin or you can leave.
I'm gonna opt to do some thinning here myself.
And we just need to let these grow up a little bit longer.
'Cause if we transplant them right now,
they are far too sensitive and they will probably die.
(light music) (air whooshing)
It's been about a month since we planted
these little lettuce seeds, and of course,
they've now grown up into lettuce adolescents,
looking really nice.
This is Paris Island.
Honestly, you could just eat it like this.
This would be sort of a baby lettuce.
And we've got a couple other varieties here.
I did wanna show you an example of what would happen
if you let it go too long without watering it
and it got to this size in a seed starting tray.
So, this guy here is our Black Seeded Simpson,
a very popular variety.
It looks kind of messed up, looks kind of dead.
Honestly, with a little water,
this will perk right back up.
And if you really need to,
you can just clip around the sides here,
remove some of the most dead leaves,
and go ahead and still transplant it.
And speaking of, that's exactly what we're going to do.
So I'm gonna grab these and these
and let's show you how to transplant some lettuce.
So I'm out here in the front yard garden,
which is my site that I've selected to plant my lettuce.
And it brings us really to the most important piece
of learning how to grow lettuce successfully,
and it's respecting the plant.
You have to understand what this plant wants to grow
and to thrive.
It really does not like to be blasted by heat.
So, you know, about 80 degrees Fahrenheit
is near its limit of what it can tolerate.
And if you really think about it,
this is how you grow your gardener's eye.
What are you growing?
You're growing a very thin,
very broad sort of leafy structure
that needs a lot of water to remain vigorous, right?
And so, if it's gonna be blasted by too much heat,
not enough water in the soil, well what's gonna wilt?
It's gonna be the leaves.
That's all you're really growing here.
So, you wanna choose at least a semi spotted area
if you're gonna get hot temperatures.
In my front yard, in the fall/winter,
I can get away with it right here.
In the summer, this particular bed
would absolutely crush my lettuce.
So what I'm gonna do is just pop out
starting with these guys right here.
So at least in our six-cell trays,
you can just push the bottom out
and you've got what in the nursery tray at least
you'd call a plug, but this is our little lettuce here.
Now I'm gonna do that with this one, this one, and this one.
And this is where you get into discussions about spacing.
So, plant spacing is,
I think maybe given a little more weight sometimes
than it deserves.
Because plants can tolerate a little bit more flexibility
there than you might think.
But with lettuce, a good rule of thumb
is somewhere around four to six inches apart
if you wanna grow full-headed lettuce.
(light music) Let's get
to transplanting, my friends.
Now what you'll notice is,
and when you're planting seeds,
you'll sometimes get more than one plant sprout per cell
or however you're growing it.
This is an example of just having one.
But over here, you can see that there are three.
Now, in my opinion, there's two ways to deal with this.
The first is to get rid of it,
and how you get rid of it is kind of up to you.
You could compost it, give it to your chickens,
you could eat it.
Or the second is to just plant it,
let it grow a little bit, and harvest it
when it's a little bit larger,
and then slowly harvest every plant but one
and then let that one grow up.
So that's what I'm gonna do here
because it's a little bit more of a better use of seeds.
So with lettuce, if you're going to fertilize,
which is not mandatory,
I would fertilize with something that's high in nitrogen.
That's the macronutrient
that is gonna grow the leaves the most,
the vegetative growth of the plant,
which is really all we're eating with lettuce.
So, I wanna come in, take my little hori hori.
We'll clear out a little space.
I wanna grab just a little sprinkling,
a little dusting of bat guano, in this particular case.
You don't have to use that.
Something like feather meal might work
or just an all-purpose fertilizer.
Now you can kind of loosen up these roots a little bit.
Roots are less sensitive than you might think.
And what I kinda like to do is,
I'll just put it in roughly at ground level here
and just backfill around it.
Get it in there.
And I do give it a little bit of a firming up,
because you know, you don't want air pockets
around those roots and in we go.
So all you wanna do here is space it out to your liking.
You can go about four inches.
You can go a little wider.
Basically, the wider you go,
the more the roots don't have to compete with other plants.
The closer you go, the more they are competing.
So sometimes, not only will it crowd it out
above the ground,
but it might crowd it out below the ground.
So, it's up to you.
You can cram it in.
You don't have to listen to me here,
but I like to go about four or six inches apart.
(upbeat music)
So now I've got my lettuce in
and it's really just watering them in.
And that does two things.
The most obvious being it gives the plant roots some water
so they can get established, but number two,
when you disturb the soil and you're putting a plant
in the ground, it helps to firm up that soil
around that root ball that you grew
and make sure that there's no air pockets in there.
Because that can be something that weirdly
can kill the plant.
It needs some oxygen down there,
doesn't wanna be hanging in air.
Another thing you could do at this stage,
if you want to, is put on what's called mulch.
So you can just put on some maybe grass clippings,
straw, dried leaves, that kind of stuff.
A little buffer, maybe one to three inches or so,
will give this lettuce some protection
from either extreme heat or evaporation
or, if it's winter like it is now, cold.
It'll protect the ground from cold.
I am not gonna mulch right now
because my temperatures are pretty moderate.
But use that information if you need it
and we'll be back to see how these have settled in
in a few days. (air whooshing)
It's been about seven, 10 days since we planted
this lettuce in.
So, let's take a look and see how it has settled in.
And what I'm looking for is nice lush green leaves.
Look at these leaves.
These are absolutely beautiful.
Of course, it's rained.
Funnily enough, rain actually brings
a little more nitrogen from the atmosphere down
into the soil, so that could be part of why they're looking
a little green.
But these are looking really nice.
Now, you can do something called the tug test.
It's a little bit fancy or a little extra, not necessary.
But to make sure that they've transplanted in,
you can just give them a little tug.
And if they're not moving at all,
that's a really good sign
that the roots are well-established
and they are not going to go anywhere.
They're not gonna die on you.
So, at this point,
lettuce is quite simple to grow.
A little mite on me right there, get outta here.
Lettuce is quite simple to grow.
You wanna keep it in relatively cool temperatures.
Make sure you're watering it appropriately.
Mulch it if you need to if you're getting some heat.
And it's getting to the point
where we can start one of the different ways
to harvest lettuce.
So it'll probably be about four or five days.
I'll see you in a few. (air whooshing)
It has been a few weeks since we last visited this bed.
And as you can see, much has changed.
Partially because of this beautiful sun
that's streaming in,
but also we got a lot of natural rain here in San Diego,
which perked this lettuce up like crazy.
One thing I wanna call your attention to.
There's actually a new plant entering the bed.
These are potatoes that I planted below the lettuce
a long time ago.
The potatoes have now come up.
The lettuce is sizing up.
So it's a really good time to harvest,
get this lettuce outta here
and let those potatoes grow.
But kind of a clever little depth planting tactic
where, while the potatoes were growing,
I was just growing lettuce on top.
Nevertheless, there are three major ways
that you can harvest lettuce.
One, I really prefer for the beginning of the season,
one for the middle and one for the end.
So let's talk first about the beginning of the season,
when there's still a lot of time left
where lettuce has great conditions to grow.
So take a look at this lettuce right here.
You have some really nice leaves.
Really large nice crispy leaves,
but the plant itself isn't that big.
So this is a good place to use what's called
the cut and come again method.
And you can use a knife or scissors, doesn't really matter.
In this case, I'm gonna use this little harvest knife.
And all you do is come around and just slice out
the very largest leaves.
So you're only taking the largest, oldest,
and most developed leaves.
And those are, of course, gonna be on this outer ring
of the plant.
So you can just come around, slice them.
I like to take the ones that might be touching the soil
a little bit just so they don't rot and get all messed up.
And as long as you don't damage this interior of the plant,
what we call the crown right in the middle here,
this lettuce is gonna keep growing for quite some time,
at least another month or so.
And all these small leaves in the center
are going to size up.
And so, I could just take probably one more,
maybe this guy right here.
And you can see,
I've almost just cut this down to size
to a smaller lettuce.
And this is called the cut and come again method.
You're getting the largest, most mature leaves,
the ones that are most ready to eat.
And that's it.
So that's method one,
really good for the beginning of the season.
I'll leave these right here.
Now there's another method for the middle of the season,
also for someone who just doesn't really care
to like cut each individual leaf.
It can be a little time-consuming.
So one thing you can do,
remember, see this crown right here?
Like I said, as long as you don't damage this crown,
the plant will keep growing
and you can, in theory, just harvest it
however the heck you want.
So, take a look at this lettuce right here.
Let me hunt down and find that growing center,
which I believe on this lettuce is right here.
So what I can do,
and maybe even this one is a better example,
so let's actually swap and go to this guy here.
What I can do is come through and just slice the lettuce off
straight across without even worrying
about what I'm cutting.
So I can just come in,
I'll go a couple inches above the surface of the soil
so I know I'm not cutting into that growing tip.
I'd probably want a bigger knife for this,
but that's fine.
I can just go ahead and do that.
And look, there's still the growing tip, growing tip.
Coulda gone a little lower, but now, in one fell swoop,
I've harvested a nice bunch of lettuce
and it just didn't take me as much time.
The third way to do it is just to remove the plant entirely.
And this is great for either you just want it,
it's a head lettuce, you wanna harvest it as a head lettuce,
or it's kinda the end of the season, you're like,
"You know what, I'm just gonna take the whole thing off."
So, in that case, same idea,
but you just come all the way down to the bottom
and sever it at the root.
Nice clean way to harvest lettuce, looks really pretty,
and if you wanna clean this up really easily
when you get to the kitchen,
you can kind of grab it like this
and then just give it a little crown chop like that.
And voila, you have a nice head of lettuce
and you kinda maximize everything that you wanna harvest.
So let's take these on back to the harvest table.
(light music) When you're done harvesting
your lettuce, you gotta get it into the cleaning process.
It's really not that crazy,
provided you harvested it the right way.
Remember I cut off most of the dirt already on all of this.
So, all I need to do at this point,
you can decide, hey, do I wanna harvest and serve this
as a full leaf or do I wanna chop it up?
And in this case, I'm gonna go ahead and chop it up.
So let's say I wanna make like a, I don't know,
a Caesar salad or something like that.
You can come through, just give it a nice rip.
It's really easy when you harvest it like this
because then, all of the lettuce leaves
are kind of broken down into even pieces.
What I like to do is harvest a lot of lettuce
and then I'll put it in maybe an outdoor sink
or a bowl or something like that,
and I kinda give it a swish.
You can look for like little slugs or snails
or little bugs.
And then, of course, wash all the dirt off.
And then what I like to do is,
you'll wanna lay this out and get it dry
and then put it in the fridge,
maybe with a damp towel in like a bag
or something like that.
That's gonna be the best way to do it.
You want it to be dry so it doesn't start
to get all moldy and sloppy in there,
but you actually wanna provide a little bit more water
in the form of that paper towel
so that the humidity isn't so low
that the crispness goes down.
So it's kind of balancing those two little factors there.
But lettuce, hands down, is one of the easiest plants
to begin growing.
Hopefully this guide showed you
how to do it seed to harvest.
Please check out our other seed to harvest guides here
at Epic Gardening.
And if you're looking for the best products in the market,
come to our store, shop.epicgardening.com.
Or you can go to a nursery and shop for some lettuce seeds
by grabbing anything from Botanical Interests,
one of our sister companies.
So until next time, good luck in the garden,
and keep on growing.
(light music continues)