Nobody likes flabby and tired-looking lettuce. Try this method instead! I use it for all kinds of different leafy greens here in the kitchen garden.

We eat our home grown lettuce every day now. It's so tasty and adds great flavor to any salad or side dish. All I need is some lovely crisp lettuce in a salad bowl with rapeseed oil and a splash of lemon. Add some garlic salt mixed with chili flakes on top! I've missed eating fresh greens all winter. It brings out the best in every meal!

I grew the lettuce in my polytunnels and hotbeds. This salad is a mix of nine different kinds of lettuces in my garden. I harvest them leaf by leaf.

I have not yet started to cover the beds where the lettuce grows with mulch. Early on in the season, when I’m still sowing, it's easier for me to keep the soil bare, but it also means that the plants can get dirty when I water them. I use this simple method to get really crispy lettuce leaves:

1. One by one, I put the leaves in a tub filled with water, and leave them there while I prepare the rest of the meal.
2. I toss the leaves around in the water so that the dirt rinses off.
3. I pour out the water and fill the tub again so that the leaves get rinsed once again.
4. I empty the tub and give the lettuce a proper shake over the sink before I use it.

Preparing the lettuce like this is a good way to keep the leaves from cracking, which does happen quite easily when you rinse them in running water. Using a tub also means that the dirt dissolves better. The best part is that this method will give you really crispy lettuce. What the leaves may loose in elasticity during the harvest and transportation to the kitchen (which sometimes take longer than anticipated due to lots of "I just have to..."), they recover during those short minutes in the water tub. You should try it!
/Sara Bäckmo

More on lettuce:
Growing lettuce: which lettuce should you pick?
Join me on my square foot gardening challenge!
Create your own paper seedling pots