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Lettuce Seed Saving.....

18 years ago

I have 2 Romaine lettuce plants that are forming flower heads and I would like to try to save these seeds. There are no other lettuce plants in my garden that are forming seed heads so, should I just let the flower stay open for pollination? What are the steps involved in saving lettuce seed?

Thanks

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Comments (4)

thomas521
18 years ago
I find saving lettuce seed to be quite easy. After the flowers fade away, the plants will eventually form seed heads, which look a lot like miniature dandelion seed heads. Once these seed heads form, remove the whole seed head(s) from the plant before the seeds blow away! You might want to use scisors, as I got my hands pretty sappy while trying to pull off the seed heads! Now, just take the seed heads indoors and pluck the seeds from them. You can also remove the white chaff that lets them get blown around, but it isn't absolutely necessary. Set them on a paper plate to dry, and leave them for at least a week or two. Then, just put them in an envelope, plastic bag, or some other container, and treat them like any other seeds.
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DanaNY
18 years ago
Thomas, the detailed info you provided is great. I'm wondering how tall do the stalks get when they go to seed?
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Saved lettuce seed, or left to reseed, can grow nice stuff. I have romaine growing right now. In fact I made a salad with some last night! I suppose if you have a bunch of different varieties growing together, you might have some crossing, but lettuce has a very low crossing rate. The recommended distance between varieties is not very far. Plus they have to be blooming at the same time since lettuce flowers bloom very briefly. So you really could grow a couple varieties together and not worry much about crossing. So if you like a variety, save that seed! : ) Remy
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digdirt, I took the addy directly from the article. I'm not sure why it doesn't go there now. My sole intention was to share information about seeds with conscientious growers. This looked like an appropriate forum for the topic, controversial as it may be. I'm new here, so if I've offending anyone for posting inappropriately, I apologize. After researching this issue however, I certainly do not apologize for being non-objective. Thank you for the feed back.
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Well, for one, intentionally stunting and stressing the plants into prematurely setting seed by growing them in solo cups doesn't allow you to evaluate the best plants to use for seed. That would be a major downside, in my opinion. But two, this guy's method severely limits the amount of seed you collect. As in you will hardly get any. Under normal circumstances a single, mature lettuce plant will give you thousands of seeds. You only really need one plant per variety to save seed from. If you don't want to use the space in your vegetable garden to save lettuce seed then consider planting several in a flower bed. Lettuce gets a few feet tall when it bolts and, at least to me, looks fairly ornamental. Save seed from the one that looks the best and bolts last. Rodney
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rain1950
18 years ago
I had Black Seeded Simpson in one flower bed this year. The flower stakls got about 3 feet tall, but the soft green and small yellow flowers blended well; plus I have enough seed for several years.
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magnolias4ever
Original Author
18 years ago
Well, the flower stalk is getting taller :) These plants are about 3 feet tall now. I'm just waiting on them to bloom out.
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