Excellent Red Lettuce

Great Germination!

I bought a pack in 2023 and have used so many seeds and gotten plenty of plants out of one packet. Its beginning of 2025 and seeds are still germinating and i have plenty of more seeds maybe till 2026.

I find this lettuce a little thicker which is a nice addition to the salad bowl. Color is wonderful.

I learned something important about this cultivar. To develop lots of the red pigment- anthocyanin- and turn really nice and red, this plant requires UV exposure from direct, real sunlight. It's an adaptation to harsh sunlight, like melanin in humans. But as you can see in my pictures, without sun exposure to trigger it, it stays green.

I'm growing this as an indoor, cut-and-come-again crop this winter. I started extra seedlings not sure how many I'd need, and even these were productive enough that I ended up leaving them grow and harvesting until they're gone totally root-bound in the seed started tray. If you were to grow them as young greens like this, you can even crowd them 2 to a cell at this size.

The ones that I repotted are doing great. I repotted 3 to a 3 gallon growbag and it was just a little crowded. It's tasty, but I had a late autumn heat wave and they've started shooting up to bolt already. Still, I won't have to buy lettuce for months yet.

As for the taste, well it's just romaine. Rinse the white sap off the cut end when harvesting individual leaves, that's where all the bitterness is. No complaints at all.