How to Grow Lettuce Indoors

If there's one vegetable I wish I could have on tap, it's lettuce. I make salads all the time, so I end up buying a lot of greens. This backfires because lettuce takes up so much space in my fridge that I have no room for other things. I rapidly evolve into an herbivore; my incisors fall out and I grow an extra stomach. And who has time for that much digestion?

Luckily, I discovered a solution: I can grow my own lettuce inside, thus allowing me to have infinite lettuce all year (maybe? hopefully?). Here's how.

Choose a location

Lettuce doesn't need a crazy amount of sun, but the more the better. So walk through your home and find a sunny spot. For extra points, make it a spot with a window facing south. Avoid traps. Don't plant your veggies right next to, say, a fireplace or your dog's food bowl, unless he too has evolved into an herbivore and really needs the nutrition.

Choose seeds

Arctic King, Tom Thumb and Winter Marvel may sound like reindeer that escaped Santa and became wrestlers, but I hear they're actually types of lettuce suited for winter and indoor light. Do the research and pick a species made to do well inside.

Plant

Find a shallow container (take out dishes with holes punched in the bottoms work too). Use a planting mix specifically designed for seed starting. Scatter the seeds and cover them with a thin layer of soil.

Keep the soil moist. They'll sprout after a week or so. Once they do, thin them out so seedlings are about an inch apart.

Harvest

Keep watering. After about a month, you'll have lettuce! Hopefully. If you do, eat the outer leaves, letting the inner ones keep growing. And don't let any runaway reindeer wrestlers snack on them. Those guys can fit a lot of lettuce in all their stomachs.