There's No Wrong Way to Harvest Lettuce

Some of my Kitchen Garden Academy students and Rooted Garden clients have told me they’re afraid to harvest lettuce the “wrong” way and mess up their plants.

Well, I’ve got good news. It’s pretty hard to do permanent damage to your leafy greens—unless, that is, you chop off the entire plant at its base.

There are a couple ways to harvest lettuce without killing the plant—you'll actually encourage it to produce even more delicious leaves. And then there's one really simple way to harvest the entire plant all at once. Let's get into it!

How to Harvest Lettuce So It Keeps Growing

One of the easiest ways to harvest your lettuce greens is by taking a few leaves at a time using the cut-and-come-again method.

More good news: you can start harvesting leaves whenever you want! Lettuce sprouts, after all, can be consumed as microgreens since every part of this plant is edible from start to finish.

How to Pick Lettuce Leaves Using This Method

I like to wait until my plants have about six or so leaves, and then, with a clean pair of scissors or snips, I cut a couple of the lower, outer leaves from each plant. I’m careful not to cut too much at once (no more than a third of the plant) because I want them to continue to take in sunlight and produce more leaves. By taking the outer leaves, you give more energy to the inside of the plant, where new leaves are formed, ensuring that you can cut and come again. 

This is the most time-consuming way to harvest lettuce, but it's the gentlest on the plants because you're only taking a couple leaves at a time and allowing them to continue their normal growth pattern.

I like to bring a colander out to the garden and harvest from several different types of lettuce, spinach, mizuna, and arugula plants this way for a colorful salad.

How to Harvest Lettuce Without Killing the Plant

There's a second method of harvesting lettuce that allows the plant to not only survive but to keep producing leaves. This method is less time-consuming than the cut-and-come-again method and super easy. I call it the ponytail chop. (I have three daughters, so we do a lot of ponytails around here.) 

How to Pick Lettuce Leaves Using This Method

Rather than harvesting one leaf at a time, you’ll go higher up on the stem and grab a handful of leaves like you’re gathering hair for a ponytail. Use a clean pair of scissors or snips to cut below your hand.

With this method, you can actually cut several plants at once, so harvesting goes quickly. I leave the bottom three or four inches of the plants so that the new leaves can start to come up, but it does take a week or two for the whole plant to recover enough to grow more leaves.

I harvested using this method from the salad box pictured below. I usually cut from a small section of the bed and then leave it to regrow; after several harvests, the bed resembles a patchwork quilt with lettuce plants in various stages of regrowth.

How to Harvest Lettuce Heads

I prefer to take small cuttings using either the cut-and-come-again or the ponytail chop methods and leave the plants to grow more delicious leaves for my salad bowl. Taking the entire head (or stems and leaves of a non-heading lettuce) ends the plant's growth cycle. For that reason, I typically only harvest an entire head if the plant is showing signs of bolting (or going to seed) or if there's another reason to remove it entirely from my garden space.

How to Harvest Using This Method

To harvest the entire head of lettuce, you'll cut through the base of the plant using a clean pair of scissors or pruners or the serrated side of a hori hori. I call this the "off with the head" method. Leave the base and the roots where they are to preserve the microbes in the soil and avoid disturbing neighboring plants. This is the way you'd harvest entire heads of romaine lettuce, buttercrunch lettuce, or even cabbage (pictured below).

Once you get your lettuce head inside, you can pull off the leaves one by one. 

How Many Times Can You Harvest Lettuce?

It’s like that age-old question: How many licks does it really take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? If I remember correctly, the answer was more than you might have expected. Well, the same goes for how many times you can harvest from your lettuce plants. 

As long as you’re staying within lettuce's optimal growing conditions, you can harvest from each lettuce plant at least three or four times in a season using the cut-and-come-again method, and about two to three times using the ponytail chop method (but you'll get more leaves with each harvest this way). Plants that like the temperature/climate they’re growing in are in no hurry to produce seed, which means you can typically expect more leaf production until the weather grows too warm. 

What happens when the weather gets hot? Lettuce plants will bolt by sending up thick center stalks that will go to seed. (Learn more about what it means for lettuce to bolt.) The good news is, there's still at least one more harvest in most of these plants, even as they start to bolt, before the flavor changes too drastically.

How to Know If a Lettuce Plant is Still Good to Eat

You can tell if the lettuce plant is still good to eat by doing the two-part Lettuce Test:

• First, cut a leaf and see if it produces a little bit of milk. The technical name for the milk is actually lactucarium (like lactus, the Latin word for milk). Lettuce milk is completely harmless, but it is a sign that the plant has moved out of its optimal growing stage for eating. If there's no visible milk, harvest away.
• If you do see milk on the leaf, do a little taste test. If the plant has become bitter-tasting, it’s headed for the compost. If it tastes okay, harvest as much as you can to eat that day.

Overall, red lettuces tend to last longer than green, and romaine varieties of the green will usually last longer than the softer butter-type varieties.

Once your plants have gone to seed and taste bitter, remove them, fill the garden with a layer of compost, and plant some greens that are appropriate for your current or upcoming growing season (such as arugula for the hotter months). You could also leave the plants in the garden if you'd like to harvest your own lettuce seeds.

How to Harvest Lettuce Seeds

To harvest lettuce seeds, you'll have to leave your lettuce plants in your garden after they begin to bolt. You'll no longer be harvesting the leaves once they become too bitter to enjoy, so your lettuce plant will just be taking up space in your garden while it focuses all of its energy on seed production.

Place a small mesh bag (think those organza bags you might store jewelry in) around the seed head to collect any falling seeds and keep them from being carried away in the wind. 

The seeds are ready to be harvested once the flower heads are fluffy and dry. The seeds themselves should be brown.

Cut the entire lettuce plant at its base, right at the soil level, with a clean pair of pruners. Tie a piece of twine around the stem and hang the plant upside down in a cool, dry place. The seeds will need to be completely dried out before you collect them or they could mildew.

Once the seeds are dry, shake the bolted lettuce plant over a bucket to collect the seeds. Pick through the bucket and remove the chaff (the debris from the dead plant). Store the seeds in a paper sack, a jar, or an envelope. Be sure to label with the date collected and the type of seed. Your seeds can potentially last up to five years.

And that's it. It's incredible to think that a plant that grew from a tiny seed has now produced hundreds more of itself!

Grow Your Own Lettuce

If you’ve never grown your own lettuce, I encourage you to give it a try. Growing leafy greens is one of the easiest ways to get introduced to the kitchen garden.

Picture yourself taking a salad spinner or a strainer out into the garden and cutting your own organic lettuce for a gourmet dinner salad... and then doing the same thing the very next time you’re craving a healthy meal. If you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to get enough!

Here's to bringing back the kitchen garden with me, one lettuce plant at a time! I wish you many bountiful lettuce harvests and delicious organic salads in your future!