Butter lettuce is so gentle to grow even opprobrious thumb gardener will have succeeder . The great thing about this eccentric of lettuce is it ’s quick to start harvesting in just a few calendar week and you do n’t have to wait for the plant to mature before you could start enjoy your tasty harvest .
Planting
you’re able to get a head start and prepare your planting situation in the fall . break away up the soil and skim a nice seedbed before covering it with mulch . Lettuce seeds are planted in early spring as shortly as the soil can be worked . Do n’t worry about a trivial frost ; it wo n’t hurt your lettuce . Just run down back the mulch and plant life .
Lettuce seedsare really tiny . you could just spread them over a planting bed and cover with a dusting of growing medium . Or , you may pitter-patter them into light dug rows and then cover with ¼ inch of soil .
irrigate the soil both before and after planting your seeds to give it a good soak . Once planted , the semen should spud within 10 day . From this level on , plant newfangled seed every two week through the decline for continuous fresh butter kale . During the summer month , underwrite them with shadowiness cloth during the hot parts of the day and prefer heat energy - large-minded varieties like :
Maintenance
The most crucial part of growing simoleons is keeping it moist . On hot days you may have to irrigate twice to keep lettuce from bolting . Use frost covers in the earliest days of outpouring to prevent leaf damage , and then shift to tad binding in the high summer .
If you are using mulch , slugs and snails can be an issue . you may pass on pick them just after sundown when they amount out to crunch . It importantly set them back . Or , build snake habitat throughout the garden by stacking up spell of urbanite or stone . Another option is to hunt down ducks through the mulch before embed . They not only eat slug and snail but the offspring and eggs also . Garden supply stores sell organic slug baits for those desperate times .
Harvest
About 6 - 8 workweek after planting , butter clams will be mature enough to pick leaves from . Pick the outer or lowermost leaves while leaving the fundamental crown integral . The plant will continue to develop and give leaves all season .
Another option is to look until the lettuce has shape a loose capitulum , and then glean it all at once.55 - 75 daysfrom planting look on your variety , butter dinero will have formed a fully ripe read/write head . Do n’t wait any longer or the folio will be toughened and may start to taste acerb . Simply reduce the shank decent at solid ground level . Store the head in a plastic bag with a paper towel to gazump up excess wet . It will keep in the fridge for up to 3 weeks .
