Lettuce, like Swiss chard, kale, and spinach, tastes so much better when grown at home. There is nothing like harvesting the fresh, organic leaves from your back porch or nearby kitchen garden just before a meal. Harvesting greens is easy enough for children to do but still fun for the mature gardener as well.
The next best thing to harvesting lettuce from your garden is saving lettuce seeds when the growing season is over. It is an easy, rewarding, and cost-saving project. There are two main types of lettuces, those that grow in heads like romaine, and loose-leaf varieties such as mesclun and arugula. Regardless of which type of lettuce you grow, saving the seeds from your favorite varieties is the same process.
What Kind of Seeds Should Be Harvested?
Make sure that the lettuce plant you want to harvest seeds from is either an open-pollinated variety or an heirloom variety as they have true seeds and will produce the same traits as the plant they were harvested from. Hybrid varieties, on the other hand, are unpredictable and not guaranteed to produce the same characteristics. With hybrid seeds, you never know what you will get.
You should also be mindful to collect seeds from plants that have been isolated from other lettuce varieties so that if they bolt at the same time, the distance between the plants will decrease the chance of cross-pollination.
When to Harvest Lettuce Seeds
When temperatures warm, lettuce leaves will begin to taste bitter as the plant turns its attention and energy into seed production. The plant will grow a tall, centralized flower stalk that will eventually produce very small-budded flowers. This is referred to as bolting.
Once the flowers have been pollinated, the small blossoms will close back up. Wait until the closed flowers reopen to expose a fibrous or fuzzy white puff that resembles a tiny dandelion flower. This stage is called feathering, and it is easy to see why. The seed is located at the base of each fuzzy puff. The process can take several weeks, so be patient.
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Once the fuzzy seed head is completely dry, remove it from the stem by hand or cut the entire stalk from the plant. To dislodge the seeds from the flower head, massage it between your fingertips over a plate or bowl to catch the material. Or you can place the seed heads in a sealed plastic bag and massage the seed heads through the bag. Another option would be to place them in a paper sack, close it up, and shake it. You may need to further separate the seeds, which are small, flat, and somewhat pointed, from the chaff and other plant debris by gently blowing on them.
The seeds, which vary in color depending on the variety, should be completely dry before you store them in a cool, dry, dark place. Otherwise, they may grow mold. I use these bags and envelopes to store my seeds, which I then place in an organizer. Generally speaking, if collected and stored properly, lettuce seeds will last about 4 years. (If you are interested in learning how long other kinds of seeds will last, check out this helpful article!)
Do not save seeds from plants that have been infected by funguses or bacteria.
Once you harvest lettuce seeds from your garden for the first time, you will wonder why you didn’t do it sooner! It is so easy and a great way to inexpensively ensure that you are able to grow your favorite varieties for years to come.
If you would like to know more about how to grow lettuce, this article tells you everything you need to know.
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