Butterhead Lettuce Monte à Peine - Ferme de Sainte Marthe untreated seeds - Lactuca sativa

The Barely Growing Lettuce, also known as the Dutch Red Lettuce with white seeds, is an old variety that forms beautiful rounded heads, well-filled and very firm. They are composed of wrinkled and undulated leaves, green tinged with brown red. It is a hardy variety with white seeds, of medium size that is sown in spring and autumn.

If Lettuce is one of the most popular vegetables (4.2 kilos per person per year), it is as much for its freshness, its crunchiness as for its taste and nutritional qualities. It can be eaten 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 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.

Growing Lettuce is easy as long as you respect the growing 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 simply done with a knife when the Lettuces are 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 open, it must be admitted that we are ready to do anything to repel or eliminate them: the ash cord (which will be quickly leached by the rain), the homemade trap filled with beer (which hedgehogs get drunk on to the point of alcohol 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 slug control products based on metaldehyde, 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.

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