I planted this "buttercrisp" variety of lettuce March 1st. How do I know when it's ready to harvest? Looks like it's about to flower and unsure if I need to let it bloom. First year growing lettuce in my bed and it's really taken off! đ (my tomatoes in the background are going super strong this year too)
by 0Quirky_Garbage0
18 Comments
Girl sheâs been ready to harvest lol.
I think you should have been eating this already.
Itâs probably a little bitter/too late right now. If you donât harvest now itâll only get more bitter, so now!
Thatâs bolted and as such might be super bitter, you should have harvested before it started spiking up but the next best time to harvest is nowÂ
I have a little one of these. Once that stalk shoots up the middle it gets super bitter
It’s way gone my friend. Try a few leaves I’m pretty sure it’s bitter. It’s bolted.
If you leave it, it will flower then turn to seed. Leave them in that bed over wi ter and they’ll pop up as yummy lettuce seedlings early next spring. Lettuce likes cool wet weather
Sorry
Have you never seen lettuce before? Like at the store?
Definitely bolting, as others have said might be bitter. Try soaking it in cold water first, you could try it in a dish to mask the bitterness like with salad dressing, or cooking the lettuce to neutralize the compounds
with leaf lettuce, you’d harvest outer leaves as it grows, not wait to harvest the whole thing at once like head lettuce
Way too late. It will be super bitter.
Ah no thatâs gonna be nasty now. Time to harvest was a few weeks ago.
Save the seeds and try again when the weather is appropriate. Try herbaceous fruits next like more tomatoes, chilis and melons (assuming you’re heading into summer in northern hemisohere)
It WAS…but now it isnt..
Good news, you successfully grew the lettuce. Bad news, it’s a little late to harvest.
On the plus side, a learning opportunity. Luckily, lettuce grows quick and you can have a new batch in abouts a month or so.
Ya, you pull lettuce leaves as soon as you want. Once it’s bolted, much of the nutrients depart from the leaves and head to the flowers, so it changes the flavor profile and tends to make it more bitter.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but your lettuce is bolting, (meaning it’s about to produce seeds.) It’s probably too bitter to eat. Next time you plant, pick off the outer leaves as soon as they are 3-4 inches long. The plant will keep growing new leaves for a continuous harvest until the weather gets too hot, the soil gets too dry, or the plant just wants to make seeds. Once it starts to shoot up like that, you might as well pull it out of the ground, because there’s no way to stop it.
A few weeks ago, yes.