Let Us Grow Lettuce

Early spring gardens in Missouri will almost always have one crop in common....lettuce.

Before the time of Christ, lettuce was grown and served. There is a wild lettuce from which the cultivated probably came. There are a number of cultivated vegetables which have wild ancestors, carrots, turnips and lettuce being the most common among them.

Lettuce may be tucked into the garden almost anywhere. It is surely one of the most decorative of vegetables. The compact head, the green of the leaves, the beauty of symmetry all these are charming characteristics of lettuces.

As the summer advances and the early sowings of lettuce get old they tend to go to seed. Don't let them. Pull them up. None of us are likely to go into the seed-producing side of lettuce. What we are interested in is the raising of tender lettuce all season.

To have such lettuce in mid and late summer is possible only by frequent plantings of seed. If seed is planted every ten days or two weeks all summer, you can have tender lettuce all through the season. When lettuce gets old it becomes bitter and tough.

There are MANY varieties of lettuce available to the home gardener. Check out some of your favorite seed catalogs, try some you've heard of, maybe some you've never heard of, and see how they do for you!