Harvest of the Month: Lettuce
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Facts
Nutrition and Seasonality
Key Nutrients
- Vitamin K – Needed for blood clotting, preventing excessive bleeding.
- Vitamin A – Keeps skin and bones healthy, resists and fights infection, maintains good eyesight.
- Folate – Helps prevent birth defects, is needed to make DNA, and helps your cells divide, including red blood cells.
Seasonality
- Fresh lettuce is available in Wisconsin from mid-June through September.
Try New Foods
Let children help cook. Making a salad is a great way to get children involved in the
kitchen.
Children can:
- Tear lettuce
- Rinse veggies
- Add toppings
- Toss with dressing
- Select: Choose lettuce with fresh, crisp leaves.
- Store: Keep lettuce in a plastic bag with small holes. Store in refrigerator for up to 1 week.
- Prepare: Rinse carefully under cool running water and allow it to dry well.
Add Lettuce to Your Favorite Family Meals
- Serve tuna, chicken, or egg salad on a bed of lettuce.
- Use lettuce insetad of a bun for a burger or sandwich.
- Ran out of tortillas? Use a large lead as a taco shell for leftover fillings.
Books
- From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons
- Green Power: Leaf and Flower Vegetables by Meredith Sayles Hughes
- Oliver’s Vegetables by Vivian French
- Plants on My Plate by Cathy Smith
- Sell What You Sow by Erica Gibson
- The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Chicken Salad Lettuce Wraps
Combine ingredients in a large bowl: 1 ½ cups cooked chicken breast, 1 cup shredded carrots, 1 cups chopped fresh spinach, 1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes, 1 cup corn, 2 tsp garlic herb seasoning, and ¼ cup reduced fat mayonnaise. Mix well. Place an equal amount of salad mixture on each lettuce leaf. Roll from one side of the lettuce leaf to the middle. Fold in sides and continue to roll. Secure with a toothpick. Enjoy! (1)
Garden Connection
Planting
Lettuce prefers cool weather and can be planted in the early spring or late summer. In the summer lettuce may be bitter and the seed stalk grows quickly. Plant seeds ¼-½ inches deep and thin seedlings 4-6 inches apart. Lettuce has shallow roots and prefers frequent light watering.
Harvesting
Lettuce can be harvested either by removing the whole plant by cutting it off at the soil level or selecting older leaves and allowing remaining leaves to keep growing. Leaf lettuce can be cut whenever it is large enough to use. Start by cutting every other plant to allow the remaining plants more room to grow.
Recipe credit: fruitsandveggies.org
