How to Grow lettuce successfully through winter

Essentially, lettuce is a cool season crop and with the right kind of care, it’s possible to harvest tasty, crunchy leaves through to spring. Here’s how to do it:

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Growing 

Winter-grown lettuce needs full sun, or at least 6 hours of sun a day. Provide fertile soil that drains well but still stays moist. When preparing the bed, add plenty of compost. A carbon-based soil conditioner, like EcoBuz HumiGro, also improves soil fertility. It can be sprinkled over the soil and watered in or dissolved in a watering can.

The best sowing months are March and April, and this can be extended into May in the less frosty summer-rainfall areas, the Western Cape, the Lowveld and KwaZuluNatal coast. Space plants 30cm apart.

For a quick start, plant out a seed tray of lettuce seedlings and at the same time, sow seed for an equal number of plants. This type of ‘succession’ planting brings forward the harvest of the first leaves by three to four weeks while the seed crop is growing. Successive crops can be sown at three-week intervals.

The secret to growing sweet crunchy lettuce is quick, uninterrupted growth. Start with a liquid fertiliser drench when sowing or planting out. Follow this up by feeding every two weeks with a liquid fertiliser at half strength. Liquid feeds like Margaret Roberts Organic Supercharger or EcoBuz MultiGro contain both macro and micronutrients.