Yesterday I spent the afternoon transplanting lettuce starts in the greenhouse. For the past two springs I have grown lettuce in my greenhouse gutters with great success, so I figured hey, why not do it again. Why mess with a good thing, right? 😉
You don’t have to have a greenhouse to try this. Nope, if you have a fence or some type of wall you can attach a gutter to, you can grow lettuce in gutters. It’s super easy, I promise. Simply line your gutters with a wee bit of pea gravel, add potting soil, then add your seeds {or lettuce starts} and water as you normally would. {See how I installed gutters in my greenhouse.}
Check out this stock tank filled with lettuce. Holy cow man, it’s really taken off this past week. My guess is the conditions for lettuce are pretty ideal right now. Rain one day {making the greenhouse nice and humid} and sunny the next.
We are harvesting fresh lettuce about every other day right now.
And the lettuce seeds I planted about 10 days ago and starting to pop though the soil. Yee-Haw! Looks like we will be enjoying lettuce until it warms up around here. {Ahem, that means July}. 😉
Gardening is cool, no matter how you do it. Wouldn’t you agree?
Are YOU growing lettuce this year? Got a favorite variety?
Mavis wants to know.
Megan says
Mavis, I have a confession. I grow lettuces every year….and I prefer store bought varieties to the kind I grow. So sad right?!? Here are my issues: After picking and washing the leaves, they are limp and weird. I like a nice crunch to my salad, so this is just not cool. Also, I ALWAYS have an issue with slugs and other gross bus getting into my lettuce. Do you have any favorite varieties or tips to help me out? I’d love to love homegrown greens, but right now I just don’t.
Catherine says
I’ve tried, but not had success with lettuce in the past. My son & I just picked out three varieties at the garden center this morning and are going to give it another go. I like your idea of gutters & think I may have just the spot on our fence to hang them. 🙂
Erika says
I’ve found that soaking your fresh cut lettuce in cold water for a few minutes can really help perk them up. I’ve tried growing several varieties, but we really prefer the sweeter, less bitter leaves, so it’s been challenging to find varieties that our kids will eat. Right now I’m growing Red Sails and Bibb (from seedlings at the garden center) and have seeds for more red sails and salad bowl varieties. Also growing spinach, too. Wish I had a spot to do lettuce gutters, but we really don’t have a place to hang them. I started cutting some leaves this week to put on sandwiches and the plants seem to love being cut since they’re really putting out lots of new leaves all of a sudden.
Cecily says
My favorite lettuce is flashy trout’s back. It is a romaine variety so it has a nice texture and sweet flavor plus the color is gorgeous. I also love oak leaf and deer tongue lettuces and radicchio and curly endive.
Barbara says
Black seeded Simpson and any romaine.
Wynne says
Renee’s has a variety called Sweetie Baby Romaine that’s my favorite. So easy and mild.
Magen Wise says
Since I been following your page I have gotten back yard chickens added 7 more chicks for my daughter. She is autistic and loves to feed them she will be 5 in may since our hens have layed eggs she will not eat a store bought egg, in our garden we started 3 types of cabbage in our garden have 2 chard plants 3 types of kale, started peas that are doing good so far will plant potatoes soon,have onions in the ground, started zucchini & squash, I could go on with what I want to plant. I live in texas so I have to plan our garden out since we have crazy weather.
arlene says
Great site! BTW, what did you use for flooring in your greenhouse?