Oak varieties of lettuce are generally super succulent, making them great for families with fussy eaters. In the garden they can be a bit on the tender side, so protecting them from frost, the brutal heat of summer, and excessive rainfall events can be a good idea. But if in doubt, plant a lot out (strength in numbers). 😄

Oak lettuces can develop into a small head of lettuce or be harvested incrementally in the garden. They produce super pretty heads of lettuce; you can grow one out to the size you want, and cut at the base to harvest all at once. Alternatively, let it grow out almost to maturity, then snap off the outer leaves as close to the stem as possible - leaving a few leaves in the center so the plant can continue growing.

Our Oak Lettuce Varieties - Vizir and Samantha

Vizir and Samantha are fancy pants lettuce varieties developed for commercial growers. They are gorgeous in the garden. Produced by Aussie Bio-Dynamic growers, this seed like lobster and caviar (figuratively speaking). Vizir is the green oak, and it grows out to a large oak lettuce with good resistance to a bunch of diseases and pests and is able to be grown year round. Samantha is a beautiful deep red oak with lime green center and produces a compact medium-sized lettuce.

We're loving these varieties at the moment.

Get more harvests out of your lettuce

We love picking the outer leaves of our lettuce, it means we don't have to re-plant for longer and leaves the plant healthy and growing strong. You need to make sure to leave a good few leaves in the center though, because the lettuce still needs to catch the sun to grow.

Some commercial growers will cut the whole plant off at the base and let it regrow. They can generally get a few cuts using this method when they leave a fair amount of the leaf still on the plant. If you want it to regrow, make sure you leave 30-40% of the leaf still on the plant. Cutting it back too much will lose its vigour.

It's different strokes for different folks, finding what works for you in the garden and loving on it is the most important part. This is what we do for our loose leaf varieties:

How long between plantings of Oak Lettuce should I wait to get continual harvests?

In short: 2 weeks

For constant delicious salad, bi-weekly successional plantings are a great idea. This keeps the lettuce succulent and allows for seasonal variations on our fragile friend. Once lettuce goes to seed the leaves start to get a little bitter, so planting fortnightly will mean you've got some salad back up when your big ones go to seed.