Easy-to-grow salads for beginners

Cut-and-come-again salads

Do you know about cutting salads? Unlike headed lettuces, which have a well-rounded heart and can be found at market stalls, cutting salads do not form a dense round ball. However, they have an undeniable advantage: the leaves regrow after harvesting! This means you can pick the leaves as needed in the kitchen without uprooting the plant. They can regrow at least two to three times, or even more depending on the growing conditions. Moreover, cutting salads are easy to grow all year round, typically from March to September in the garden and from October to February under cover. And since they do not form a round head, they take up less space, which is perfect for beginners in the vegetable garden.

There’s something for everyone! Among the most common varieties, you’ll find the lovely oak leaf lettuce ‘Blonde’, with its tender green, undulating leaves. The tasty cutting lettuce ‘Lollo Rossa’ stands out with its frilly leaves, beautifully tinged with red. To add some colour variety, you can even use a mixed lettuce seed ribbon ‘Salad Bowl’ to harvest both green and red leaves. If you prefer stronger flavours and diversity, consider sowing mescluns, such as the cutting mesclun ‘Speedy Mix’, which consists of a selection of fast-growing salads.

Cutting lettuce ‘Blonde’, mesclun, and cutting lettuce ‘Lollo Rossa’

Summer lettuces

When summer arrives, the summer heat tends to trigger the running to seed of salads. This means that your beloved lettuce will grow tall to produce seeds instead of nice edible leaves. Moreover, the leaves often become bitter, which is not very pleasant on the plate! This running to seed can happen very quickly, in just a few days if it’s hot or in the absence of regular watering, which is not easy to anticipate, especially for beginner gardeners!

To limit this inconvenience, one can choose so-called “summer” or “lazy” lettuces. These varieties of lettuce are particularly good at withstanding heat and are less likely to run to seed. They are therefore easier to maintain when starting out in the vegetable garden or when time is short.

Among the most well-known is the famous ‘Grosse Blonde Paresseuse’ lettuce, which, as its name suggests, runs to seed slowly. The batavia lettuce ‘Kinemontepas’ is also a heat-resistant variety (note that it’s all in the name!). Similarly, the ‘Rigoletto’ butterhead lettuce is known for its resistance to heat and running to seed. This good heat resistance is also found in the ‘Grosse Pancalière’ curly chicory and the ‘Panisse’ oak leaf lettuce.

‘Grosse Blonde Paresseuse’ lettuce and ‘Grosse Pancalière’ curly chicory

Salads for (almost) every season

When you start to take an interest in vegetable gardening, particularly in sowing salads, you can quickly feel overwhelmed by the many varieties available and their various planting periods. With winter, spring, summer, and autumn salads, it’s not always easy to keep track. However, there are accommodating varieties of salads that thrive well when planted in (almost) all seasons! They are generally grown from October to February under cover and from March to September in open ground in the vegetable garden. They stand out for their good hardiness in winter, with a high tolerance to summer drought, which prevents them from bolting too easily.

Among these easy-to-grow varieties, the top choice is, as its name suggests, the butterhead lettuce ‘Merveille des 4 saisons’, as well as the beautiful red lettuce ‘Rossa di Trento’ with its brown-red marginate leaves. Similarly, the butterhead lettuce ‘All The Year Round’ is a hardy variety that is resistant to summer heat. As for the loose-leaf lettuce ‘Blonde améliorée’, it grows quickly but is cultivated from spring to autumn and even in a cold greenhouse during winter.

butterhead lettuce ‘Merveille des 4 saisons’, red lettuce ‘Rossa di Trento’, and butterhead lettuce ‘All the year round’

Salads that resist slugs and snails

Perhaps you have already tried it, but slugs and snails can be a hindrance in the vegetable garden. The attacks of gastropods on salads can even discourage the most motivated novice gardeners! So before learning to (sur)live with slugs, it’s better to plant resistant varieties. It is known that red-leafed salads are generally avoided by snails, who dislike their flavours and prefer green-leafed varieties. For example, the Lollo Rossa lettuce, the Senorita lettuce, the Merveille des 4 Saisons butterhead lettuce, and the Grenadine Oak Leaf lettuce all have beautiful purple-red foliage.

Ingrid’s tip: When your young salads are still in pots or trays, don’t hesitate to hand-cut small pieces of leaves. The salad will associate this amputation with a pest attack. It will then modify the flavour of its leaves as it grows to deter gastropods. As a result, your salads will become a bit more resistant to slug attacks.

Lollo Rossa lettuce, Merveille des 4 Saisons butterhead lettuce, and Grenadine Oak Leaf lettuce[/caption>

For further reading

• Find all our varieties of salads to sow or plant.
• Discover our advice sheets: Salads to harvest in autumn and winter and 15 salads for summer.
• Also, check out all our tips in our salad buying guide.
• Need tips for successfully transplanting your salads? Discover François and Olivier’s advice: