Lettuce is a winter crop for Phoenix. The best time to plant your lettuce seeds is from August 15th through January 15th. It will take about 50 days before you can start to harvest any leaves. What I love about growing my own lettuce is that instead of picking the whole head, I just cut off leaves on the outside and let the plant continue to grow. The commercial growers of the baby leaves cut all of the leaves, and let the plant continue to grow a new set of leaves. If you are growing head lettuce, this is a little harder.

As the weather starts to warm up, your lettuce will go to seed. The lettuce leaves become more bitter. I have let the lettuce go to seed and let nature spread the seeds. You could also collect the seeds for next years crop.