Greens & herbs
Lettuce
The winter salad anchor; summer lettuce is not offered here.
- Outside
- Direct Sep to Oct, Dec, again Feb
- Where
- Raised bed or in ground
- Sun
- Full sun; takes part shade in warm spells
- Water
- Little and often; dry roots trigger bolt
- Harvest
- Nov, Jan, then Mar to Apr
Care
- Water
- Little and often, keeping the top inch of soil damp: shallow-rooted lettuce reads a dry spell as a cue to bolt. Water the fall rows in the dry spells between fronts, and lean on winter rain, which does most of the watering from December on.
- Sow
- Direct sow a quarter inch deep, thick, thinned in stages with the pulls eaten: the main round September into October, again on the county's winter lists in December and January, and a final round February into March.
- Feed
- A light, fast crop: compost worked into the row at sowing is plenty, and no liquid feed. Extra nitrogen buys limp leaves, and a green cut inside two months never needs it.
- Ready
- Cut outer leaves and the plant rebuilds, or shear a row an inch high for baby salad and let it flush again. Black Seeded Simpson is cuttable about 40 days from sowing; a head that firms in the cold is a bonus, and winter rows cut for weeks.
- Trouble
- The failure is the calendar, not a bug: heat bolts it, so every sowing sits between September and March, and a stand racing up a seed stalk is finished. Cut what remains and let the winter rounds carry the salad bowl instead.
In a bag?
- Yes
- Up to a 1–3 gal bag.
- Water
- A bag dries far faster than a bed even in the cool months; check the top half inch and keep it damp, daily in a warm fall or spring spell.
- Feed
- A pinch of compost worked in at sowing is the whole program; the leaching bigger bag crops fight matters little at this size.
- Sow
- The Texas container guide lists leaf lettuce at 1 gallon and ideally suited; broadcast across the bag, cut with scissors, and resow the top when a round thins out. A fall or winter bag salad is easier than the still-warm ground.
Lettuce anchors the winter salad garden here: sown from September into March, cut through the cold months, and skipped outright in summer heat.
Growing
In cool-season gardens lettuce is the spring star, sown early against a June that ends it; Killeen turns the calendar over and hands it one long cool run from September into March. The county sows it in February and March, again in September and October, and straight through the winter lists, because the ground never freezes and winter is real planting weather here. Summer is the one closed door: the research is blunt that summer lettuce is not offered here. Sow short rows rather than a whole bed, keep the seedbed damp, harvest cut-and-come-again, and resow a patch whenever a round is spent; the February round finishes before the heat returns.
Varieties
The Central Texas list is long: Black Seeded Simpson at 40 days, Buttercrunch, Lollo Rossa, New Red Fire and Salad Bowl for cutting, and the romaines Jericho, Parris Island Cos, Rouge d'Hiver and Winter Density. The two winter-named romaines read as the cold-season picks.
In the kitchen
This is the winter salad garden the county's greens rows are built around: leaves cut at dusk and still crisp, dressed simply, beside the radishes and the winter scallions. The May burger goes without local lettuce, and nobody schedules around it.