Divisi
How to grow Lettuce
Lactuca sativa · Asteraceae
Photo: DeFacto · CC BY-SA 4.0
Lettuce is a fast, leafy salad crop grown for its crisp, tender leaves — and because people eat it raw, you must grow it clean. At heart it is a cool-weather plant: it grows best when the days sit between about 15 and 20°C, and it suffers in real heat. When the weather turns hot (a daily average above about 25°C), or the days grow long, lettuce bolts — it shoots up a tall, bitter flower-stalk and stops being worth selling — and in hot soil the seed will not even sprout. So the whole game is simple: grow it in the cool season or the cooler highlands, keep it evenly wet, feed it lightly, and cut it young and fast. It comes in a few types — soft loose-leaf, tender butterhead, upright cos (romaine), and tight crisphead (iceberg) — and loose-leaf is the easiest and most forgiving to start with. A crop is ready in just 6 to 11 weeks and sells well near towns, but it wilts within hours of cutting, so it is only ever as good as how fast you cool it.
DeFacto · CC BY-SA 4.0 
Rainer Zenz · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Days to maturity
- 45–75 days
- Row spacing
- 38 cm
- Plant spacing in the row
- 30 cm
- Sowing depth
- 0.5–1 cm
These are general figures for the crop, compiled from published agronomic references including FAO and CABI. The right choice for your field depends on your soil, rainfall and the yield you are aiming for.
Will lettuce actually do well on your land? Check your field against every crop in the catalogue — free, no signup. Run the free crop check →
Other names for Lettuce
slaai · lettuce · laitue · salade · alface · saladi · letusi
Working in buckets, bags or paces? The farming glossary turns the measures growers actually use into kilograms and hectares — what a 20 litre bucket of each crop really weighs, and how to size a field by walking it — alongside the Shona, Swahili, Ndebele and Yoruba words used in the field. Open the glossary →
Growing lettuce, stage by stage
From a shaded nursery bed to a crisp cut head — a fast cool-season salad that lives or dies on cool weather, steady water, and cutting before it turns bitter.
- Raise strong seedlings in the nursery
- Prepare the bed and get your seedlings
- Transplant and settle the crop in
- Grow the leaves and heads — the make-or-break stretch
- Cut at the right moment
- Cool it fast and keep it fresh
15 step-by-step tasks in the app
Every task for lettuce — what to do, when to do it and why it matters — with the amounts worked out for your own field, reminders as each one falls due, and warnings before extreme weather.
Pests and diseases that attack lettuce
Divisi tells you which of these is a risk on your lettuce right now, when to walk the field looking for it, and what to do the moment you find it.
Frequently asked questions
How long does lettuce take to grow?
Lettuce takes about 45–75 days from sowing to maturity, though the exact length varies with variety, temperature and how the season runs.
What spacing should I use for lettuce?
Space lettuce rows about 38 cm apart, with roughly 30 cm between plants within the row.
How deep should lettuce be planted?
Sow lettuce at about 0.5–1 cm deep. Shallower risks drying out; deeper wastes seed energy before the shoot reaches light.
What pests and diseases attack lettuce?
The ones covered in this guide are Lettuce mosaic virus, Slugs and snails. Each has its own page explaining how to identify, scout for and control it.
Grow lettuce with a plan, not a guess
Divisi turns this guide into a dated plan for your own field — what to do each week, reminders as tasks fall due, and warnings before extreme weather. Free for farmers, works offline.
Or check your field first