Grow Easy Sandy Lettuce in Containers or Garden Beds

Virtues: We love 'Sandy', an oakleaf lettuce, for its sweet taste, disease resistance (including powdery mildew, tip burn and downy mildew) and heat tolerance. 'Sandy' lettuce can be grown among cool-season annual flowers in mixed beds and containers, or kept to a traditional vegetable garden. It's a versatile lettuce to grow and use and an All-America Selections winner for 2015.

Common name: 'Sandy' lettuce, 'Sandy' oakleaf lettuce

Botanical name:Latuca sativa 'Sandy'

Foliage: As an oakleaf variety of lettuce, 'Sandy' develops lobed leaves. They are green in color and offer a sweet taste whether they're harvested as baby greens as a cut-and-come-again crop, or as a head at maturity.

Habit: The lettuce forms loose heads measuring about 10 to 12 inches around at maturity.

Season: 'Sandy' lettuce is a cool-season vegetable.

How to grow 'Sandy' lettuce: In early spring, direct sow seeds into the garden ground or into containers, spacing the seeds 10 inches apart and burying them a quarter of an inch deep. Keep the soil evenly moist until germination (which takes 7 to 10 days) and then continue with moderate watering. Like other vegetables grown for their leaves (as opposed to their fruits), 'Sandy' lettuce will tolerate part shade. Full sun is also appropriate. If 'Sandy' is grown for baby greens, these will be ready about 30 days after sowing the seeds. Pick outer leaves first. Mature heads are ready about 50 days after sowing. 'Sandy' lettuce can also be grown as a fall crop, with seeds started in late summer.

Image courtesy of All-America Selections.
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