All seed bearing plants bring forth cum at some stop in their growth cycle . ab initio , industrial plant will make leaves to pile up sunlight . later on the plant will grow flowers to pollinate and finally fertile seeds . The leaves of the lettuce plant are what is eaten so they are unremarkably harvested before the plant efflorescence or seeds .
Lettuce Growth Cycle
If a dough plant is allowed to arrive at maturity , it will originate a cardinal procreative shoot that springs up and farm a clustering of small flowers .
The bloom self - pollinate and wilt . In their place grows trivial parachutes called pappus . Each of the parachutes is attached to several kale seminal fluid . The pappus is the plant ’s rude dispersion system designed to spread the seeds through the wind .
Annual or Biennial
For the most part , lettuce is grow as an annual . This means that it is plant and seeds all in the same twelvemonth . Since it ’s not dependent upon a pollinator , most farmers get more than one harvest of moolah in a year typically planting in the bound and tumble .
Some lettuces and lettuce - like plant can winter in milder climates and become biennials . witloof , spinach , and chard are examples of biyearly greens . These plants wo n’t bloom or seed in the first twelvemonth but rather , go almost dormant through the wintertime month and flick out again the following give . They provide some of the earliest crop from the garden before seed in the natural spring or summer of their second year .
Bolting vs. Seeding
A lettuce plant life go through a natural outgrowth round that cease with seeding . A plant that has produce a mickle of leaves and has substantial vegetative growth will by nature go to seed within its outgrowth cycle .
bolt happenswhen a plant gets accentuate out and goes to germ out of desperation . The works thinks it ’s going to die and seed in a last - ditch effort to preserve offspring . This is vulgar in lettuce that get too hot or juiceless even just for a mean solar day or two .
How to Save Lettuce Seed
Here is an easy method acting for saving lettuce seed . What you ’ll need :
Cut a piece of tulle fabric large enough to correspond over an total blossom cluster of one clams plant . Slip it over the flowers and bind it at the base around the bow . You have formed a little tulle bag around your blossom head . As the seed mature they will fall into your tulle dish instead of bobble away .
When the seeds have matured , cut the stem and shake off the remain seeds into the tulle . transpose them to a plastic bag or jarful and strike out it with the variety and year harvest . Store your seeded player in a cool , dry position until it ’s time to establish them .
