When to Plant Lettuce

Planting time for lettuce is set by your frost dates, not by the calendar month. Start seeds indoors about 4 weeks before your last spring frost, then transplant once the soil has warmed. From there it takes roughly 50 days to the first harvest. Lettuce is a hardy crop, and it keeps going about 14 days past a light frost, which is what makes a fall crop worth planting. Pick your zone below for exact dates, or find your zone by ZIP if you are not sure which one you are in.

Lettuce bolts in heat. Fall sowings ripen into cooling weather instead of out of it, which is why fall lettuce is usually the better crop.

Fall dates are counted backward from your first frost, not forward from a sowing date. Take the 50 days lettuce needs, add about two weeks because growth slows once days shorten after the equinox, then subtract the roughly 14 days lettuce keeps going once light frost arrives. That is 50 days before your first frost. The coldest zone where this still works on the averages is Zone 3a.

For the whole-garden version of this arithmetic, see the fall planting calendar by zone, and how to read and stretch your first frost date.

Lettuce grows well next to carrots, radishes, corn and tomatoes. Shallow-rooted and shade-tolerant, so it uses light and space a taller crop would otherwise waste. The full grid for all 24 crops is in the companion planting chart.