Mesclun Lettuce

Mesclun Lettuce Care

Mesclun Lettuce

What is the plant

Mesclun, or mesclun greens, refers to mixture of young lettuces. It's the basic mix of greens found in your local salad bar, on a menu at a restaurant, and in the produce aisle at the grocery store. The percentage of each leaf varies, based on whomever has created the blend, but it's always composed of the most tender leaves.

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Humidity

Normal

Lighting

Shade

Difficulty

Medium

Hibernation

Cold Period

How to Care for the Plant

Water
Keep your lettuce plants consistently moist from planting until harvest. The ideal moisture will have your soil feeling like a wrung-out sponge.
Pruning
Unlike many vegetables, it’s almost impossible to harvest butterhead lettuce too early. The smallest leaves are tender and delicious as baby lettuce in salads. Make use of these leaves when thinning young plants in the garden. As the plants grow, you can harvest the outer leaves only, leaving the inner leaves to grow. Or, you can remove the entire plant if you desire a head of lettuce. By cutting the plant at the base and leaving the roots to grow, new leaves will sprout, giving butterhead lettuce a cut-and-come-again quality. It’s important to harvest butterhead lettuce before the plants bolt (produce flower stalks). The leaves of bolting plants become bitter and unpalatable. Butterhead lettuce is delicate and wilts quickly after harvest. Pick the leaves in the late morning when the dew has dried, or in the evening.
Fertilizer
Nitrogen-rich fertilizer promotes the leafy growth of butterhead lettuce. You can choose a single ingredient simple fertilizer such as blood meal, or feed by adding generous amounts of compost or manure to the soil. For a quick nutrient boost for successive plantings, use a liquid fertilizer formulated for vegetable gardens.

Disease diagnosis

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Sunlight
Lettuce is generally considered to be a full-sun vegetable, and will germinate and grow more quickly if it's given as much daylight as possible. That said, it will tolerate partial shade and may even benefit from it during warmer weather.
Soil
Prepare your planting bed by loosening the soil to at least 10 inches deep. Mix in an inch or so of good compost or well-rotted manure. Sow lettuce seeds a quarter of an inch deep and 1 inch apart in rows or squares, or simply broadcast them over the bed.
Temperature
Lettuce is adapted to cool growing conditions with the optimum temperatures for growth of 60 to 65°F. At 70 to 80°F, the plants flower and produce seed. Lettuce can tolerate a few days of temperatures from 80 to 85°F, provided that nights are cool.