Lettuces offer beautiful heads more or less tight with green leaves or tinged with red. Tender and crunchy, spring lettuces are resistant to freezing temperatures and cold.
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With the tomatoes, lettuces are essential in the vegetable garden. Easy to grow, anticipate sowing under cover to harvest the first spring lettuces from April.
Which variety of spring lettuces to choose?
The lettuces are sown all year round so choose so-called spring varieties, very early, to cultivate from the beginning of the year.
Here are some gardener-approved varieties:
- ‘Queen of May’: head lettuce with leaves of color green marked with red;
- ‘Gotte Jaune d’Or’: dense head lettuce with light green leaves;
- ‘Appia’: light green head lettuce with large head;
- ‘Novappia’: bulky head lettuce with smooth, green leaves;
- ‘Dorée de Printemps’: batavia lettuce with a tight head and golden blond leaves.
When to sow spring lettuces?
The first spring lettuces can be sown from the month of January, under cover. A tunnel, frame or nursery may be suitable for housing these leafy greens. In regions with weather sweet, you can sow them directly in the vegetable garden from March. Avoid having too many salads at the same time then, afterwards, not at all; it is necessary for that to space the periods of sowing in order to benefit from the crunchy sheets of long months. Sow every week or every 15 days.
How to sow spring lettuces?
Prefer a loose soil, enriched with humus, worked deep and fresh for successful cultivation of lettuces. A location at Sun will promote the healthy development of salads. In furrows 3 cm deep, well watered, sow lightly, avoiding crowding the seeds. Cover with soil and tamp the surface. Redo a watering light on the freshly sown furrows.
Count about three weeks between sowing and the first transplanting, when the feet bear a few leaves. Space the rows and lettuces of 25 cm in order to be able to pass the hoe to weed andair to avoid the installation of diseases. Gently lift every other foot to transplant them into the vegetable patch. This transplanting makes it possible to leave the necessary space around the lettuces that have remained in place in order to grow perfectly and makes it possible to multiply the lettuces in the vegetable garden.
Once the seedlings are transplanted, water copiously, avoiding the foliage. If your salads are still under cover, remember to ventilate as soon as a nice day is announced. Be careful with slugs who love very fresh young shoots. To remedy this if an attack takes place, place beer traps, chaff of linen or ashes around the feet.
Two months after sowing, you can harvest the first lettuces by cutting the stalk with a knife.
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