lettuce seed

A few days ago one of my Lettuce towers started "making fuzzies". Some of the tiny yellow flowers had turned into parachutes (I like what my daughter calls them, "flower poofies"). I don't need many and don't want lettuce seed all over the garden so I cut off the ones that had formed full open parachutes, into a bowl. After taking about a dozen little poufs, I chopped the rest of the plant down, even though it could still give me ten times more flower heads. I don't need that many! It's a messy job, as the plant has sticky white sap after bolting. So I let the pieces sit for a few days to dry out, as I don't want my fingers (or the seeds) all sticky while separating them!

After they've dried a few days, here's how I separate the seed out. It's quite simple.

  I pinch each fuzzy parachute part between the tips of my fingers:

Then it's easy to pull off the dried flower part and brush the seeds off the fuzzies.

Out of fifteen poufs I think I got over a hundred seeds (that little pile has about ten).

These will be all my Lettuce seed for next year's planting, both spring and fall. I want a mix of seed from several different plants, so even though I already have plenty, I'll probably dry and harvest a few more poufs off the other Simpson plants before cutting them down. The Bibb are flowering now; they'll be next!