Winter Lettuce Merveille d'Hiver - Lactuca sativa

The Winter Wonder Lettuce is a hardy and fast-growing variety that produces large, compact heads. Its blond green foliage is slightly wrinkled. A reliable and easy-to-grow variety! It can be sown from August to October for a harvest from March to May.

If Lettuce is one of the most popular vegetables (consumed at a rate of 4.2 kilograms per person per year), it is appreciated for its freshness, crunchiness, as well as its taste and nutritional qualities. It can be consumed raw in salads but also cooked, braised, or stewed, for example, to accompany peas.

As the quintessential leafy 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. Winter Lettuces are hardy and cold-resistant Lettuces. Their development is slower than summer Lettuces, so they should be sown in late summer/early autumn for a spring harvest.

Growing Lettuce is easy as long as you follow the cultivation schedule for each variety. It grows quickly and thrives in any soil, as long as it is rich and remains moist.

Harvest: 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 on, we are willing to do anything to repel or eliminate them: ash cord (which will be quickly leached by rain), homemade traps filled with beer (which hedgehogs get drunk on until they are in a drunken coma), copper bands that are supposed to electrocute them (which tickle them a little)...

Instead of wasting your time and, incidentally, your lettuce, 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.

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