Homegrown Lettuce: The First Winter

A couple of years ago, grocery store shelves started looking pretty sparse when it came to fresh lettuce. Prices were rising, and finding a decent head of romaine felt like a scavenger hunt. That’s when we decided to take matters into our own hands—literally.

The goal was simple: keep eating the same amount of salads and greens we were used to, but grow all the lettuce ourselves, in the winter, using our go-to hydroponic system for indoor gardening: Kanana Hydro-Planters. It was November, and we gave ourselves until January 1st to become completely store-free lettuce eaters.

The Plan

We started by germinating seeds for a small variety of greens—two types of romaine, one red leaf lettuce, and some spinach. But we knew that seeds take time, and we were a little impatient to get some greens on our plates. So, we tried something new: planting pre-grown lettuce heads that you can buy with the roots still attached.

We grabbed a few different brands:

• inFarm (green leaf lettuce)

• Big Marble Farms (living butter lettuce)

• Safeway brand (red leaf lettuce)

The Setbacks

A romaine lettuce head that was infected with mildew

Like with any experiment, things didn’t go quite as planned. The living butter lettuce from Big Marble Farms turned out to be our first r first bit of bad luck. It was infected with mildew, which we couldn't have known at first. Unfortunately, it quickly spread to a few of our seed-grown lettuce plants. Lesson learned: be cautious with "living" lettuces. If you're going that route, either keep them separate from your other plants to avoid contamination, or use the lettuce from in-store hydroponic systems - they seem to have lower contamination rate.

As for the spinach we grew from seed, while it gave us a decent crop early on, it bolted after only about a month. Spinach, as it turns out, is very prone to bolting, so we didn’t get much out of that crop either.

Thankfully, not all was lost. The remaining living lettuces thrived, and within the first month, we were harvesting fresh leaves while our seed-grown greens slowly caught up. This early harvest helped buy time for the seedlings, which were still a few weeks away from being ready.

From Seedlings to Success

By the two-month mark, we were transitioning from store-bought lettuces to the ones we’d grown ourselves from seed. The timing couldn’t have been better. The pre-grown lettuces were starting to reach the end of their life cycle, while our seed-grown romaine and red leaf lettuces were just hitting their stride.

Come February, our indoor garden was in full swing. We had six heads of lettuce producing continuously, providing more than enough to keep us in salads. In fact, we had so much lettuce that we started bringing salads to every event just to keep up with the supply!

Our lettuce garden (and sugar snap peas) in February

The Inevitable End

By the time May rolled around, we noticed that the lettuce was starting to bolt. One by one, the heads began to flower, signaling the end of their leafy productivity. We knew it was time to say goodbye to our winter lettuce and reluctantly terminated the remaining heads.

While our indoor winter lettuce season came to an end, we had done it! For six months, we didn’t have to buy a single leaf of lettuce, and the experience taught us a lot about timing, troubleshooting, and the joy of homegrown greens.

Now, we’re planning the next phase, eager to apply what we’ve learned and hopefully extend our lettuce-growing success well into the summer. Stay tuned!