lettuce in a small pot

[starloc]

This is a strange question...how small pot can you grow lettuce in?

In the supermarkets you can get 3 types of lettuce growing in the one pot, about 3 inch square

Is it easy to get it to grow to a decent size in a 3 inch pot or do they do it on capilairy matting etc and then chop the extra roots from the bottom off?

i have loads of those shuttle trays of 3 inch pots.....

[zazen999]

It's usually cut and come again rather than heading lettuce in the supermarkets....you can ram these in quite close together but after a while they do get a little lacklustre.

You have to think volume that you want to pick so if you would eat it every day, sow a pinch every day in 1 or 2 pots and you should be on a rolling lettuce wagon in a few weeks.

[starloc]

what we have done other years is buy a few in the pots from supermarket and plant them out in flower buckets and they grow quite tall,we just keep pulling leaves off here and there they last weeks as they keep growing ,
they do taste better when smaller though, so i was thinking planting as you say a few pots a day, i was thinking things like lollo rosso, lollo biando and similar

[zazen999]

I have a bag of lettuce seeds; all mixes and types, and I just keep them separate and put a pinch in a pot or 6 module whenever I remember.

[taff]

they grow quite tall? are they not going to seed when they do that? and get bitter?

[Davyburns]

Do they need deep roots? I am trying to grow some in a tray 2" deep, and there not going anywhere. They just seem to have stopped

[Bren In Pots]

Before I had beds I grew all my lettuce in those plastic rectangular troughs that you can buy for around £3.

[zazen999]

they grow quite tall? are they not going to seed when they do that? and get bitter?

No - with heading lettuce you can pick the leaves off the outside and the middle just keeps growing. They usually just bolt and go bitter when the temp soars....

[Potstubsdustbins]

I have three troughs 6" x 6" x 24" with 5 lettuces of varying types in each. I then make fortnightly plantings in modules so that as I pick a lettuce I can replace it with a seedling. This way I can keep two families in lettuce through the season.


Colin

[Kristen]

In the supermarkets you can get 3 types of lettuce growing in the one pot, about 3 inch square

Are they the ones that are grown in a rockwool cube? If so I expect they have been grown by hydroponics - in which case the size of the "pot" is rather irrelevant to how well they grow as the hydroponic fluid is changed regularly (or even flowing past the plant in the case of, say, NFT) so rather "unlimited" compared to the growing volume of the substrate.

[starloc]

Are they the ones that are grown in a rockwool cube? If so I expect they have been grown by hydroponics - in which case the size of the "pot" is rather irrelevant to how well they grow as the hydroponic fluid is changed regularly (or even flowing past the plant in the case of, say, NFT) so rather "unlimited" compared to the growing volume of the substrate.

the ones we get are in compost, but the pot has been removed, there are often clean roots sticking out of the bottom of the rootball about 3 inch long, i presume they are done in a shuttle tray system where they are just flooded to water and the roots have just grown out of the pots to the tray, or it could be something like capiliary matting

[buzzingtalk]

I have so many salad seeds at the min, and need to plant some too. Will have to try some of these tips out!!

[elsie-scot]

they grow quite tall? are they not going to seed when they do that? and get bitter?

I left some little gem in small pots last year, and they grew very tall, not bitter, just kept pulling leaves off