Hydroponic Lettuce, Easy to Grow and Delicious

Growing lettuce

Why should your grow Hydroponic Lettuce? Is it to have fresh salad or to get the satisfaction of home grown organic lettuce? With the rising cost of organically grown fresh produce, growing your own can be an inexpensive way to enjoy all the yummy benefits without all the pesticides. You can either buy a hydroponic kit to grow lettuce on your counter for a few fresh plucked leaves daily, or you can set yourself up for tons of fresh salads for every meal and even to share.

Gardening lettuce set Up

If you don't care to read those 20 pages on Wikipedia, or search the internet for the perfect set up of how to grow hydroponic lettuce, here is a basic set up for nearly any produce you should want to grow. While some things grow best with certain systems, any system will work. You just need to remember to keep the water moving and aerated, keep them supplied with fertilizer dissolved in the water, and give them plenty of light and fresh or circulating air.

Pick out a system that works with the time you have at hand and the space you have to give them. If you have your own green house or shed you can stand to have a large tray set up with a growing medium for them to anchor in, if you are growing hydroponic lettuce on the countertop, then a smaller set up, such as a floating system or shallow jars or pots will work.

If you have decided to use the potting medium such as pearlite, coco-husks (coir), pebbles, rock wool, heydite, vermiculite, peat, straw, or other medium in a jar or tray system set at an incline. Or, if you have decided to go with the linked pipe system and a holding tank, the care once the system is set up is generally the same.

hydroponic lettuce growing and Caring for You Salad Farm

Once you have decided on a system, then it’s on to the care and lifecycle of the lettuce plant and other greens. Even if you decide to not go organic, just remember, in a hydroponic system everything is already organic except the fertilizer unless you choose organic fertilizer. The difference is that easy! While all systems work well, a tray filled with vermiculite or small pebbles works best.

First, make sure your lettuce plants get plenty of sunlight. If you do not have a south facing window, or better yet, a green house, then set them up with some florescent grow lighting on a cheap light timer you can find at any major retail store such as Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes, Home Depot, Home and Garden Store, or major grocery store. Set up the chosen system as directed. Then be sure to either buy some already started plants, or to start some seeds in the vermiculite or other medium. Change the water once per week so it is aerated and circulated properly.

Lettuce reaches maturity in about 3 months. That just means you can expect to eat it in about 4 to 6 weeks and it will go to seed in about 4 months. Be sure to harvest all the mature plants and replace them before they start shooting, that it, sending up flower stems to reseed themselves. If you want a premium crop year round, then you have to grow letture indoors under controlled conditions and have about four crops going at once. Start the crops at different times and rotate a new lettuce seedling crop in as you harvest the last of the mature crop.

Enjoying a Fresh Bowl of hydroponic lettuce

Once you have decided on what lettuce types or other greens to grow, chosen a hydroponic system to use, and a location, and gotten started, then you just need to change the water weekly and follow the manufactures instructions on the fertilizer dilution. From there the only tip left is that really sweet lettuce tastes best if you run plain water through the system for a few days before harvesting. Then, the harvested and washed lettuce should keep about a week or two in the refrigerator. Harvest it often to have a sweet bounteous crop all year long. Enjoy!

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