LETTUCE (Lactuca sativa)

 

For  years and years, I have bought Romaine lettuce to use as a base for my green salads and then added extra stuff to it from my garden.  Romaine is a good nutritional lettuce, (forget iceberg), and I rather like the name.....thinking of ancient Romans eating their salads.  Occasionally I have tried planting a few lettuce seeds but I always seem to either blast the seedlings out of their beds through rough watering, or they get some bug or other.  All rather off putting so that it was easier to just buy the Romaine lettuce.  However, several months ago, one of my grandchildren put me in charge of his 4 inch pot of lettuce seeds that he was given at school.  Somehow, they actually grew, and I was able to enjoy the leaves in my sandwiches. This gave me enough hope that I went out and bought myself a new packet of seeds.

Young Manoa lettuce, note the blue sticky trap to catch leaf miner.

The lettuce seeds I bought were:  Green Migonette Manoa Lettuce.

This is a semi-head lettuce which the University of Hawaii at Manoa tested out as the best grower for Hawaii lowland conditions.  It tolerates some heat but will grow bigger, with a firmer head, in the cooler months.

This particular packet of seeds is packaged by Fukuda Seed Store Inc.  They own a seed store in Honolulu and and have been in business since 1920.  They take pride in providing seed for Hawaii climate conditions.  Because I am a country mouse, I had no idea that this store existed in town until I read about them in a newspaper article several months ago.   It is a good local business to check out and support.  With all of the extra interest in home gardens during our covid pandemic, our local ACE store is now selling Fukuda seeds as well. They have a website:  fukudaseeds.com   

The University of Hawaii, Manoa, also sells seeds developed for Hawaii's climate.  You can order them online through their agriculture department.  Google CTAHR.   Actually that reminds me of some good advice that I should pass on to you.  Whenever you have questions about growing any plant in Hawaii, you can just google CTAHR and the name of the plant and see what info the university ag. dept. gives out on it.

Now that I had hope and good seeds, two other things came along that really helped me in growing lettuce.  The first was advice from a Facebook group gardener that helped with leaf miner that has become a problem in my garden lately, especially with leafy vegetables and tomato leaves.  She recommended buying sticky traps that are targeted for leaf miner and can be bought at Amazon.com.  You hang the sticky strips around the garden to catch the insect stage of the leaf miner and they have greatly reduced the problem.

The other super helpful advice I got from a garden book that I borrowed from the library.  It is to use a plastic water bottle, with holes pierced with a needle in the cap, to water your seedlings gently.  Absolutely brilliant!   Easy to do and it suits my cheap side too.

I grew my lettuce in a large shallow bowl pot as lettuces are quite shallow rooted.  It sits on a stand so up and away from slugs although I still had to watch out for those tiny round snails.  I had the bowl under the curry leaf tree which gives a much appreciated light shade to part of my kitchen garden.  I know you see photos of farmers growing lettuces in big sunny fields but if you are growing lettuce at home in Hawaii it needs some shade from the hot afternoon sun, especially in the summer.  It may also need some protection when heavy rains arrive too.  My plan was to just lift the pot to under the roof if that happened.  Lettuce needs to be pushed fast through its growth cycle so that it will stay lush and strong so that you can harvest it before the bugs get it.  I had added lots of compost to the pot and gave it some fertilizer a couple of times.  You also need to keep the soil moist, which meant for me, watering the lettuce container morning and night so the plants would not stress.  I tried to water the soil rather than the leaves to help prevent any fungus causing problems.

After a month I was picking leaves and at two months I started pulling up the whole plant as they started to stretch up and think about flowering.  With all of the threat of Rat Lung Worm from slugs and snails these days, I was careful to wash the leaves well in a big bowl of water.  Then I wrap the leaves up in a paper towel and put them into a plastic bag to store in the fridge.  In summer, I always pick the fresh lettuce, and other produce from my kitchen garden, in the mornings before the hot sun starts to put them under stress.

Aloha