How to grow lettuce well?

Lettuce is a vegetable that many people like to eat, and many people grow it at home. However, when planting it, they will find that the lettuce they grow is not as thick as those sold in the market. So how do you grow lettuce well? Let’s learn more about it below.

1. Soil

When planting lettuce, you need to choose loose and breathable soil. It is not suitable to plant it in heavy clay soil. The soil should be deeply plowed and turned over, and sufficient organic fertilizer should be applied. The soil can be plowed in advance, which can kill some pathogens and insect eggs and is beneficial to the development and growth of the root system.

2. Base fertilizer

Lettuce is a fertilizer-loving crop, and it will grow thin and weak in poor soil. When preparing the land, you can apply 4000 kg of fully decomposed farmyard manure and 40 kg of triple compound fertilizer as base fertilizer per mu. Farmyard manure must be fully decomposed. Undecomposed farmyard manure is not only easy to cause root burn of plants, but the bacteria and insect eggs it contains can also easily cause lettuce to become diseased and pest-infested.

3. Density

The leaves of lettuce are very dense during the growth process. If the spacing is too close, it will lead to poor ventilation and light, which will easily cause it to grow too tall but not thick. Therefore, reasonable row spacing and plant spacing can ensure its good growth. Generally, a spacing of about 35 cm is more appropriate for lettuce. Too dense will affect its growth. If you just want to harvest the leaves, you can reduce the spacing to about 25-30 cm.

4. Field water and fertilizer

Lettuce likes nitrogen fertilizer. Insufficient nitrogen will cause the plants to be short and weak. After the lettuce seedlings have grown, you can water them with decomposed thin manure water (1000-1500 kg per mu). Manure water is a fast-acting nitrogen fertilizer that not only promotes rapid growth of seedlings, but also improves the taste of lettuce.

Lettuce seedlings enter a vigorous growth period 20 days after planting. You can apply 15 kg of urea per mu and water them after topdressing to prevent premature bolting of the lettuce plants, so as to promote leaf development and expansion of leaf area. In order to promote stem hypertrophy, we can spray 0.3% potassium dihydrogen phosphate foliar fertilizer (90 grams of potassium dihydrogen phosphate per mu and 30 kilograms of water), once every 10 days, and spray 2 to 3 times in a row, which can significantly increase the yield of lettuce.

Lettuce has shallow roots and is not drought-tolerant. It is advisable to keep the soil moist during the growing period. It can be watered once every 5 to 7 days, and watered frequently in small amounts during the hot season. The roots of lettuce cannot tolerate waterlogging. Do not allow water to accumulate in the fields and keep the fields dry after rain. During the low temperature and fog stage, if the humidity in the field is high, we can remove some branches to improve ventilation and light transmission in the field, which can reduce diseases and pests of lettuce.

5. Leaf spraying

Spraying the leaves can significantly increase the thickness, growth and yield. Before and during the expansion period of the stems, use 10-15 grams of 5% amino fresh lipid + 30 grams of potassium dihydrogen phosphate, add 30 kilograms of water, and spray the leaves once, with an interval of 10-15 days between the two times, which can increase the yield by more than 25%.

That’s it