lettuces I am growing 2013

[littleminnie]

I have been looking for heat tolerant lettuce and mean to really work at having lettuce all season and more head lettuce and less baby leaves.

High Mowing:
Nevada was out of stock
Green Star

Pinetree:
Bughatti
Radichetta

Fedco:
Strela Gree
Lollo di Vino
Bronze Mignonette
Jericho
Sierra
Pablo

Also summer mix and winter mix.

I have some lettuce remaining from last year but do not have it completely listed.The thing to do this year is not have an accident and mess up all the varieties/identification!

Any of these not heat tolerant?

[steev]

What if you just plant what you have, sampling leaves from those that seem most heat-tolerant, and letting those go to seed for next year?

[oxbowfarm]

Try Johnny's, they are better at lettuce than just about everyone else. In my experience, the best summer green leaf is Simpson Elite (a Seminis variety if that matters to you).

For summercrisp, Nevada is good, Cherokee is better.

Romaine, Jericho is very good so is Plato II. Only place for Plato II anymore is to save it yourself or Wild Garden Seed.

[ferdzy]

Don't know much about specific varieties but in my experience the darker the leaf, the quicker it turns bitter. All those beautiful dark red lettuces that are so fashionable right now? Taste terrible the minute it gets warm. Merlot, ptui.

Good old Black Seeded Simpson has been really good, ditto Grand Rapids. Australian Yellow was a bit of a disappointment. Tom Thumb stays mild even as it bolts!!! Most of the spotted lettuces have done reasonably well. For a lettuce with a some colour to it, Prizehead stands up fairly well.

Our soil is sandy and acidic, and that affects which lettuces do well for us, besides their heat tolerance. They are in general not fans of it.

[littleminnie]

I do not buy Seminis seed or buy from anyone who carries it. Too bad Nevada was out of stock. I have heard great things about Jericho.

[oxbowfarm]

I prefer not to buy Seminis either, but I also don't like to be without Simpson Elite. Fortunately lettuce is about the easiest seed to save there is and I am now self sufficient in Simpson Elite.

I hardly ever buy from Pinetree anymore, but I was aware that they claim to have stopped buying Seminis products but they still carry at least one.

Celebrity is a flagship Seminis variety.

[littleminnie]

They are not buying from them this year and just selling out their stock. I got an email from them. I talked to them a few years ago and they refused to stop working with their friends at Seminis even when Monsanto bought them but now they have changed their minds. Kind of like when Kellogg's sent me a nasty reply when I asked how they could put HFCS in a diet cereal- special K. They have now removed it, years later.