What's going on everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening Podcast. Today I'm taking a question from my friend

Phil who says, hey, my iceberg lettuce never went ahead. It grew almost four feet tall and then went to seed. This is outdoors in fresh

garden soil in a raised bed. I sewed the seed directly in April, zone five, so soil was workable, but we did have some

frosts. What are some common mistakes I may have made or things I should have done, but

I didn't? This is a great question. Lettus, although it's one of the easier crops

to grow, there are some mistakes that people can run

into that can sort of mess the crop up. So let's talk about this. A lot of people who grow head

lettuces can run into problems with it not actually forming that

head.

So why is that happening?

Well, here's what's happening there.

Lettices that form heads require cooler temperatures.

So that means that they grow pretty well in spring and they grow pretty well in fall.

The warmer the temperature gets or the warmer your climate is, the higher the chances that you're not going to get a head on that lettuce.

And so the reason why is because it's going to bolt or it's going to fail to fix heads when temperatures

are higher than about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So it is really again an easy crop

to grow but the plant responds very very strongly to

temperature so if you really want a classic delicious beautifullooking iceberg lettuce head or another lettuce

forming that forms heads, what you want to do is make sure that you keep that

temperature below 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, some other things that you might be running into,

although I would say that the climate is the biggest problem.

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