Lettuce
Lechuga · Laitue
🧩 Role in the garden
- Family
- Asteraceae
- Height
- low (< 40 cm)
- Shape
- compact
- Roots
- shallow
- Sun
- tolerates some shade
- Season
- cool season
- Grows in
- summer or winter beds
- Feeds
- medium feeder
Jobs in the bed
- Fast fillerHarvested within weeks, so it fits between slow crops before they fill the space.
Rotation
Do not return Asteraceae to the same spot for 3–4 years. Same family:
✓ Good neighbours
✗ Keep apart
None listed.
⚠ Use caution
- ⚠ Sorghumits roots and fresh residue release sorgoleone, which stunted or killed tomato, lettuce and broccoli transplants set into freshly killed sorghum (plant them only after the residue has broken down)
✿ Helpful flowers & herbs
- ✿ Calendula (pot marigold)Magnet for pollinators and aphid-eating hoverflies & parasitic wasps; works as an aphid trap Can attract slugs
- ✿ Sweet alyssumTiny flowers attract hoverflies whose larvae devour aphids; ground cover
- ✿ DillAttracts ladybugs, parasitic wasps & hoverflies (aphid predators) A minor host of the carrot fly: keep it away from carrots