A love letter to our lettuce

Kerry A. Thompson

When we started waist-high gardening last year, one of my favorite things to do was to walk out to the front yard where our garden carts are kept and pluck some lettuce leaves for a spontaneous salad. The lettuce was our longest-lasting and most prolific crop.

At the end of the season when the lettuce plants flowered and went to seed, Tom, on a lark, shook a bunch of the seeds back onto the soil. With a greenhouse cover over the carts through the winter, those casually planted seeds rewarded us with lots (and lots) of new plants this summer. And with more sun than last year thanks to roomier garden plans, those plants are growing strong and tall, looking a bit like Jurassic-era vegetation.

We bought the original seeds from High Mowing Organic Seeds. They are a variety pack called Yankee Hardy Blend Lettuce. It seems like this leafy medley is hardy enough for wintering over through a New England winter and delicious enough to be decorating many summer salads with their colors and curlicues eight months later. Lettuce say thank you!