Lettuce Lollo Rossa - Lactuca sativa

The Lollo Rossa lettuce is a cut lettuce with beautiful red-tinted, nicely curled and undulated leaves. It is a tasty salad, pleasantly coloured, which can be sown from February to August for a harvest 6 to 8 weeks later.

If lettuce is one of the most popular vegetables (4.2 kilograms per year per person), it is as much for its freshness, crunchiness as for its taste and nutritional qualities. It can be consumed raw in salads but also cooked, to accompany peas, for example.

As the ultimate leaf vegetable, lettuce is an annual plant that belongs to the large family of Asteraceae. Its Latin name, Lactuca sativa, refers both to the white sap (lactuca) that flows when it is cut and to the fact that it is cultivated (sativa).

It is an essential vegetable in any respectable vegetable garden and there are so many varieties that it is possible to grow it almost all year round. Cut lettuces do not form heads and are harvested as needed because they have the ability to regrow after each harvest.

Growing lettuce is easy as long as you follow the cultivation calendar for each variety. Its growth is fast and it thrives in any soil, as long as it is rich and remains moist.

Harvest: It is done with a knife, by picking the leaves around the plant which will continue to develop and produce new leaves.

Storage: Lettuce can be stored for a few days in the refrigerator, but to enjoy its freshness to the fullest, we recommend consuming it immediately after harvest.

The gardener's tip: A real nightmare for gardeners, slugs and snails love lettuce leaves. When the hunt is on, it must be admitted that we are ready to do anything to repel or eliminate them: ash (which will quickly be leached by the rain), the homemade trap filled with beer (which hedgehogs get drunk on until they reach an ethylic coma), the copper bands that are supposed to electrocute them (which tickle them a little)...

Instead of wasting your time and, incidentally, your salads, we recommend using an anti-slug product composed of ferric phosphate known as Ferramol. Unlike metaldehyde-based anti-slugs, which are dangerous for wildlife and polluting, Ferramol is natural, non-toxic and very effective as long as you remember to 'treat' your plot a few days before sowing.

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