The EASIEST Way To Grow Lettuce EVER!

What’s the easiest way to grow lettuce? Back in this post, I talked about how difficult it’s been for me to grow lettuce in the soil here because it doesn’t hold water for very long. Even if you live in an area with good soil for gardening, thirsty lettuce needs to be watered more frequently than most other crops – the cucurbits (cucumbers and melons) being the possibly even thirstier exception.

Sure, you can set up an irrigation system and a timer, but most backyard gardeners are going to be growing their lettuce together with other crops, which would end up getting watered as much as the lettuce.

This would equal a waste of water.

The easiest (and least wasteful way) to grow lettuce

Last spring I came upon the Kratky method of growing. It’s a hydroponic method that doesn’t require pumps. You fill a small container with a growing medium (not dirt from outside!), put a seed or seedling inside, then set that small container on the rim of a much larger container that contains water with hydroponic fertilizer dissolve into it.

As the plant grows, it “drinks” the water. And as the water level goes down, the ever-growing roots of the plants are exposed to the air they need on order not to drown.

During the past year, I’ve discovered the hands-down, best crop to grow using the Kratky method is lettuce, mainly because lettuce roots don't mind algae growth nearly as much as other kinds of roots.

Making the Kratky method even easier

Ever heard of a floating garden? That’s the easiest way to grow lettuce using the Kratky method. Unlike the roots of most other plants, lettuce roots don't mind mostly sitting in water.

Do you have a backyard pond with fish or some rotted plant material in it? Even better!

If you don’t have such a pond, just buy a few Styrofoam coolers, fill them most of the way with water, and add the appropriate amount of hydroponic fertilizer to it.

You can use underbed storage boxes wrapped in panda film (white side out, black side in), too, if you want. The only thing is, the weight of the water will push the sides of a storage box out. That's okay if you don't mind the look, and you don't plan to move it from it's location during the entire growth of the lettuce.

If you use a cooler, you can cut the lid down so that it floats in the water inside the cooler. If not, you can use foam board, or Styrofoam blocks that you save from packing.

This is a very lightweight piece of foam that came with an LED grow light I purchased.

Whichever way you go, cut a hole big enough to hold the small container the lettuce is going to grow in by tracing the rim of the container and cutting just slightly inside the circle you trace. If you have a big block of Styrofoam, or are using foam board, cut four equally-spaced holes for every square foot.

These are 2-inch holes for the 2-inch net cups the baby lettuce are growing in.

Insert the container (net cup, yogurt container, whatever) with the growing medium and seed or seedling into the hole you cut. Then, set the piece of foam into your pond or water-filled box.

The net cups fit perfectly!

DONE! No watering, no fertilizing. Ever.

The one thing you might want to do, if you have summers where the temperature regularly soars above eighty-five degrees F, is locate the growing system in an area that will be shaded in the afternoon.

In the video below, I show you how I added lettuce to the kale I already had floating in our pond. It’s a vlog, so you see peeks into other areas of my homesteading life. Enjoy! (And subscribe to the channel if you have not yet done so and want to keep up with all our goings-on.)