Lettuce. [1] The cultivation of this plant, of which there is such great consumption, has been detailed by La Quintinie, Chomel, and Liger (author of Ecole du potager ) in France, and by Bradley and Miller in England. We refer interested readers to them. [2]

We will simply remark that while seeds of all sorts of lettuces may be easily gathered, the difficulty lies in finding good seeds. Seeds from lettuces which have been sown early in spring or spent winter in the ground should be preferred. When the lettuces flower, the plants from which the seeds are to be taken should be selected. They are then leant upright in a row against the laths of contre-espaliers and left to ripen and dry, following which they are cut and laid out on a large cloth in a dry place in order to dry the seeds out further. The plants are then threshed and the seeds cleaned of their chaff, separated, and stored away from mice and vermin. However, in spite of these precautions it sometimes transpires that seeds which have been properly collected, chosen, separated, dried, and conserved do not come true if they are sown in the garden in which they were gathered. One should therefore have a reliable partner who gathers seeds each year in the same way and with whom the seeds may be exchanged. This last observation deserves to be called to the attention of flower growers, who should practise it with their flowers.

Notes

1. Lactuca sativa, in reference to the milky sap of this plant.

2. The prolific agriculturalist Louis Liger (1658-1717) composed a book on fruit and kitchen gardens in 1702. Richard Bradley ( c. 1686-1732), professor of botany at Cambridge, treats the cultivation of the lettuce in article ‘ Lactuca ’, Bradley, 1728, and in Bradley, 1718, part III: ‘Of the Kitching-Garden’. See also article ‘ Lactuca ’, Miller, 1752.