When to sow lettuce?
- Botanical name
- Lactuca sativa
- Family
- Asteraceae
Lettuce is sown outdoors from March to July, 1 cm deep. It germinates in 8 to 10 days. It is harvested from May to October.
Lettuce is an annual plant. The edible parts are the leaves.
Lettuce through the year
- indoor sowing
- transplanting
- outdoor sowing
- harvest
In short
Growing conditions
Companions in the bed
Companion planting is tradition and not an agronomic claim. What is recorded is which pairs sources recommend and which they advise against.
This is good use of space rather than plant protection: the lettuce is picked before the cabbage covers the ground.
A row of garlic is set among the lettuce against visiting game.
Kohlrabi is a quick catch crop.
Mint runs through a bed and after two years you will not get it out, so plant it in a pot sunk into the bed.
- “Cited” means the pair is named by one source or two.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
Aphids
pest- Signs
- Colonies of small aphids sit on the shoot tips and the underside of the leaves. The leaf curls and puckers, and sticky honeydew is left on everything below. The viruses they carry are more dangerous than the feeding itself.
- Prevention
- Go easy on nitrogen, because soft sappy growth is what aphids are looking for. Encourage the predators (ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps). Use a reflective mulch, which puts them off settling, and a strong jet of water to knock the colony off the tips.
Slugs and snails
pest- Signs
- Holes appear in the middle of the leaf rather than along the edge, young plants are eaten down to the ground, and there are slimy trails in the morning. On low-growing fruit there are gnawed pits.
- Prevention
- Remove the hiding places beside the bed: boards, stones, dense weeds. Water in the morning and not in the evening, so that the night is dry. Spread a band of coarse sand or gravel around the bed. Cover young plants with fleece. Pick them off at night, which is still the most effective measure.
Keep track of your plants with Tendask
Log the task and set a reminder for the next one. Every plant keeps its own history, so there is nothing to guess at.
Related plants
The plants below are in the same botanical family (Asteraceae).
Sources about the plant: Clemson Cooperative Extension, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, KGZS Kmetijsko gozdarska zbornica Slovenije, KGZS Zavod Ljubljana, KGZS Zavod Nova Gorica, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Royal Horticultural Society, Semenarna Ljubljana, Smernice za strokovno utemeljeno gnojenje (Mihelič et al., MKGP 2011), University of Maryland Extension, Utah State University Extension, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.