Lettuce Moon Red - Split Pills, average packet contents :  25 seeds

One of our favourites, Lettuce Moon Red is a little gem type lettuce with deep red outer leaves and a green heart. Growth wise it is slightly larger than Little Gem, but still compact with an upright habit. The plants show good disease resistance.

Moon Red looks good, has a nice sweet flavour and comes highly recommended, it can be grown for Spring, Summer and Autumn growing.

Harvesting time will depend on sowing time.

General Guide to Sowing and Growing Split Pill Lettuce Seeds

Lettuce need good soil to grow well, ideally the soil should have been well dug the previous autumn incorporating adequate manure as digging. Lettuce plants don’t like full sun but enjoy growing in an area which is slightly shaded and away from full sun.

Seeds can be started indoors or outdoors for a summer crop;

• Indoors: Sow 1 pill to a cell. Plant outdoors once the seedlings are considered large enough, and have been harden off.
• Outdoors: Sow single pills thinly in 2cm deep drills which are 30cm apart. Cover the seeds with soil. When sowing outdoors make sure you don’t sow the seeds to close as this will waste seeds and make more working thinning them out in a few weeks time.
• NOTE: Lettuce Seeds germinate best at cooler temperatures, they may stay dormant if too hot.

You will need to protect your lettuce seedlings from slugs.

Harvesting Lettuce

Lettuce are quick growers and before you know it your lettuce will be ready for harvesting. The lettuce will be ready as soon as a firm heart has formed, you can test to see if they ready for harvesting by gently squeezing the top of the plant.

Pull the whole plant from the ground and then cut off the root and lower leaves. Making sure you compost the roots and lower leaves.