Using a combination of cleverness and audacity, I’ve managed to get some of my favorite hobbies integrated into my work life. Gardening is obviously the chief of these and one of the unanticipated results of starting this school agriculture program has been that I suddenly have more than one growing space in my life. Beloved by a whole community, the Classical Roots Veggie Garden is watered almost every day of the summer by students, weeded by passers-by, and generally fussed over by more people than I can keep track of. It therefore yields plenty of veggies annually, most of which I send home with our summer volunteers or stuff into the arms of other teachers, and some of which I bring home for cooking.
This state of affairs means that I’ve come to look at my home garden a little differently. If we’re growing zucchini or pumpkins at the Classical Roots Garden, and I’ll likely be able to reap some of that harvest, why dedicate a fifth of my home plot’s real estate to an enormous zucchini plant or pumpkin trellis? As my wife and I reflected on this question last winter, we decided to favor efficiency and dedicate our home garden exclusively to three things: tomatoes, herbs, and lettuce.
A tomato taken straight from the sunny vine is the natural right of any gardener and not a pleasure I was prepared to give up. Having a fine excess of them is always a joy—you can make sauce if you don’t manage to eat them all, or slap big salted slabs of beefsteak tomato onto a slice of buttered bread for the perfect summer lunch—and I didn’t want to have to drive to school to experience it. Herbs fall into a similar category: you need them on hand all the time at home if you’re to make full use. Yet the third choice might seem strange to new gardeners who aren’t used to growing lettuce at home and therefore don’t see the point. Let me attempt to change your mind.
Volume 2 of The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture tells us that, as far as we know, the Egyptians were the first to raise lettuce on a large scale, both to produce oil from pressing its seeds and to eat the leaves as vegetables. We all know that a sandwich is simply better with a slice of fresh lettuce and that salads make superb impromptu meals, especially when summer is at its hottest and heavy meals start to feel unappetizing. But, at least initially, even gardeners seem content to buy plastic-wrapped packets of Iceberg lettuce from the grocery store and call it a day. Why bother to grow your own?
For one thing, as Monty Don tells us in The Complete Gardener, the average head of grocery store lettuce has been subjected to around eleven sprays of pesticides, the chemicals of which tend to be absorbed by the leaves, becoming a permanent feature. The other reason is that since most commercial lettuce is grown hydroponically, it’s been forced into a hyper-fast growth cycle that’s heavy on moisture and low on minerals, resulting in big, flabby leaves that taste roughly like a gust of wind.
But there is a better way. Growing lettuce in the soil at home not only gives you access to almost infinite variety (there are dozens of sub-types within each of the seven major groups of lettuces) but also makes sure each of them is as flavorful and chemical-free as we want them to be. At home, we informally dubbed last summer “the summer of the salad” because we found ourselves going out into the garden to create them so often. Never a big salad man myself, I couldn’t believe the difference in flavor and texture in our home-grown stuff: it was more than a blank canvas for a slathering of ranch, it was often the main event.
Most lettuces want temperatures that sit above fifty but below eighty degrees Fahrenheit. Though they can often survive much lower temperatures and even a little frost, they won’t actively grow in such conditions, leaving them vulnerable to disease and slugs. Slugs are the bane of the salad gardener and you’ll need to keep them in mind as you make your plans, especially if your climate is on the moister side or you have a lot of undergrowth around your home. They can hide basically anywhere, residing by their thousands within a single quarter-acre plot—a full acre of farmland can support up to 250,000 of them.
If slugs are around, and they probably are, you’ll want to protect your seedlings with copper pipes laid on the ground—slugs hate crossing copper—but not with slug pellets or beer traps. Beer traps are a fun idea but, apart from being strangely appealing to dogs who will lap them up, slugs included, in seconds flat, they will also tend to draw in more slugs from your neighbor’s yard than they manage to kill, resulting in a net gain of total slugs at the end of the day. Attracting birds to your yard is a sound strategy too: crows and starlings love to eat a juicy slug.
The other way of dealing with slugs is to start your lettuce as plugs indoors, harden the plugs off in a safe spot, then plant them out once they’ve developed large, strong leaves. Like rabbits, slugs prefer tender new-growth leaves to more mature ones, so they will be less likely to nibble an older, stronger plant. If you do plant lettuce, resist the temptation to slap six rows of it in the ground on the same day in May. Six weeks later, you’ll end up with more than you know what to do with, then that excess will disappear, leaving you with nothing. The sounder plan is to sew a little every week or so and rotate it out sequentially: a steady stream of lettuce rather than a flood. This tactic will allow you to enjoy this staple crop all summer and even into the fall if you can provide the plants with some protection.
Green is the color of flourishing and vividness. Rows of rain-splashed lettuce in a summer garden are living symbols of simplicity and order, a comforting sight from your kitchen window and a thread that connects your home to a long line of cottage gardens throughout history. Exotic crops are a joy in the garden, too, but I’ve come to treasure the humility and heartiness of lettuce even more than the flashier crops in my collection. The rector of my church once said that sermons are like meals: you don’t remember them all but, over time, they sustained you. Many things in our lives are like that. As I get older, I’ve started to think they’re the most important ones.