If you are new to gardening and looking for some simple vegetables to grow, lettuce should be at the top of your list right along with the tomato.
Growing lettuce is very easy as it does not take up very much space and can even be grown along with your flowers. This vegetable will grow for many weeks throughout the mild weather during the spring and the fall months. You can easily tuck in some leaf lettuce between other types of taller vegetables.
Lettuce is also easy to grow in some containers.
When it comes to flavor and vitamin content, homegrown lettuce is superior to the type that you purchase at your local grocery store.
If you take the time and have a little bit of patience, you will be greatly rewarded by your efforts as you will have fresh lettuce to use in salads and other dishes all growing season long.
1. Preparing the Soil
When you are ready to plant some lettuce seeds or transplants in your garden one of the most important things that you will need to do is to prepare the soil. The soil that you are going to plant your lettuce in needs to be quite loose and it also needs to be able to drain well. The soil should be able to stay moist without becoming too soggy.
In order to keep the soil fertile you will want to make sure that you add in some composted materials or manure about a week before you plan on planting your lettuce seeds or lettuce transplants.
Since the lettuce seed is very tiny it is important to make sure that the garden bed has been well tilled.
Large clods of dirt and stone will inhibit the germination of the seeds. Take the time to make sure all of these types of things are removed from the soil before you start the planting process.