One of the first and most grown vegetables is certainly lettuce. Butterhead, crisphead, romaine, or loose-leaf there is always at least one variety or type of lettuce growing in every vegetable garden. But what happens when the garden is just too hot to grow lettuce?

Lettuce is a cold-loving vegetable thriving in the temperatures around 15°C (60°F) sometimes if the soil is wet enough it will germinate and grow even on 4°C (20°F). It will quickly start forming heads and the leaves will be doubling in size each week. 

The lettuce will continue to grow until the temperature stays under 26°C (80°F), but once the temperature reaches 30°C (86°F) this will happen:

Even the small and new-planted seedlings will soon start bolting or forming stems with flowers. Once the temperature is too high there’s no way of stopping it. The bolting will happen so fast that one day the lettuce plant will look normal and the next it will already start growing tall.

This is something that happens in my garden every single year. Even this year which was milder than the past years, lettuce sown on the sunny side started bolting after a couple hot days.

The heads haven’t even started forming and the seedlings are already full of flowers. 

Another good way to grow lettuce during the heat is sowing it in pots during the late summer and transplanting it in autumn. This will prevent the tiny seedlings from getting sunburns and once the days get cold enough they will grow into a pretty lettuce head.