Lettuce Justine - Lactuca sativa

The Justine Lettuce is a lettuce with a beautiful dense head and a nicely combed appearance, tolerant to heat, particularly suited for summer cultivation. Its beautiful tender leaves, slightly curled and of excellent taste quality, are perfect in salads, braised, as a garnish or steamed.

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

The ultimate leaf vegetable, lettuce is an annual plant that belongs to the large Asteraceae family. 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 can be grown almost all year round.

Lettuce cultivation is easy as long as you respect the cultivation calendar for each variety. Its growth is rapid and it thrives in any soil, provided it is rich and remains moist.

Harvest: Simply use a knife to harvest lettuce when it is well developed.

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 harvesting. Freezing cooked lettuce is also possible.

Gardener's tip: A real nightmare for gardeners, slugs and snails love lettuce leaves. When the hunt is on, we are ready to do anything to repel or eliminate them: ash cord (which will quickly be leached by the rains), homemade traps filled with beer (which intoxicate hedgehogs to the point of ethylic coma), copper strips that are supposed to electrocute them (which tickle them a bit)...

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 slug killers, 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.

Note: Attention, our young plug plants are professional products reserved for experienced gardeners: upon receipt, transplant and store them under cover (veranda, greenhouse, cold frame...) at a temperature above 14C° for a few weeks before being planted outdoors once the risk of frost is definitively avoided.