Batavia Lettuce Rouge Cardinale - Ferme de Sainte Marthe untreated seeds - Lactuca sativa

The Cardinal Red Batavia Lettuce is a superb late variety that forms small heads of thick leaves, with green marked with red spots. It is a beautiful lettuce that can be harvested from spring to autumn and is resistant to running to seed and mosaic virus. Sowing from February to August for a harvest 6 to 8 weeks later.

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

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 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.

The cultivation of Lettuce is easy as long as the cultivation calendar for each variety is respected. Its growth is fast and it thrives in any soil, provided it is rich and remains moist.

Harvest: It is simply done with a knife when it reaches ripeness.

Storage: Lettuce can be stored for a few days in the refrigerator, but to make the most of its freshness, we recommend consuming it just after harvesting.

The gardener's little trick: 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: the ash string (which will be quickly leached by the rain), the homemade trap filled with beer (which hedgehogs get drunk on to the point of alcoholic coma), the copper bands 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 slug killers, which are dangerous to 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.

Untreated or "NT" seeds come from plants grown conventionally (often with the use of phytosanitary products), however, they undergo no treatment after harvest. These seeds are allowed in organic market gardening when organic seeds are out of stock.