Lettuce appreciation society

Following on from Eyren post on another thread. I thought lettuce should get a little slot of its own. 
There are so many different varieties, shapes, colours and some very interesting names. 
Do you have a favourite? Any varieties you have trouble growing? Any you don’t like? Do you think they have different flavours? (Also mentioned in a reply in the other thread   ). 

I really like lolla rossa, Tom Thumb, and Morton’s secret mix ( from real seeds ). I grow these every year. Along with lots of others. I’m not a fan of lobjoits green cos & little gem ( also a cos, I think ). I find them to bitter,  but I still grow them! I just like growing lettuce. 

I grew a red iceberg lettuce a few years ago, I liked that. Never found any seeds again unfortunately. Iceberg not the most flavourful but I do like the slight crunch to it.

         

I tried growing some last year (Little Gem, Lolla Rossa, and Iceberg - all from an A*di multipack thing), and found them all bitter. I think I grew them where they got too much sun, so I'll try them on the shady side of some peas or beans or some such this year. My husband found them inedible (plus he has bad memories of stealthy slugs in his grandad's homegrown lettuce...), so they'll have to be a lot better to make an appearance again after this attempt.

Edit to add: I do appreciate lettuce! I'm just terrible at growing it

       

This is my permanent lettuce bed - its at least 2-3 years old! I can pick lettuce from it all year round. I usually take a handful of the biggest leaves and leave the stumps to grow on.
When its tomato plant time, I clear a bucket sized space in the lettuce, put the tomato bucket there and leave the lettuce to grow around it. Sometime in summer the lettuce will flower and set seed. I leave them to fall where they will, or cut off the seeded stems and shake the seeds out over any empty bits. 

What is the name of this amazing lettuce I hear you ask? 
Who knows is the reply.
I bought a punnet of living lettuce from Lidl and planted the lettuce in the GH - they went bonkers!!

I had most success last year with Mordore, which is a dark red romaine - I grew them in the shade of my CFBs where they went unnoticed by the pigeons! It also looked decorative and had a nice crunch to it. I don't mind a slightly bitter lettuce as long as it has good texture, as one can always "dilute" the flavour with milder leaves and/or counter it with a sweet dressing. What I'm not so keen on are the soft, floppy butterhead type, or watery iceberg.

I used the Charles Dowding method of only picking the outer leaves, and they carried on cropping for weeks on end. Plus doing this means they soon grow well clear of the soil, so slug damage is minimal.

The only downside was the price - at £3.99 for about 40 seeds it was the most expensive lettuce I've ever bought! Confusingly, some sources say that it's an F1 variety, and the price seems in line with that, but most listings don't mention it so I'm not sure. Maybe it just doesn't set seed easily?

I'll be growing it again this year, as I have seed left over, as well as some new-to-me varieties: Crisp Mint (another romaine), Grenoble Red (batavia) and the loose leaf lettuces I mentioned in the other thread: Elf Ears Oak and Really Red Deer Tongue.

On a general note, Red lettuce and other red leaves are less attractive to slugs than green ones................sure I've read that somewhere - and I don't mean my identical post on another thread.

Paris Cos has been one of my favourites over the last few years. I also grow mixed salad leaves in seed trays for cut and come again. If I try grow any salad leaves at the allotment they just end up either completely flattened or they grow on nicely but under close inspection are riddled with little black slugs so I tend to grow at home in large pots. My plan is to remove the sides of my raised beds as they deteriorate rather than replace them in the hope that this is aiding the slugs, it's what C Dowding says and I can only dream of his salad plants.

No chance of growing lettuce in the ground here - too many dogs and chickens around! In the GH I can control the watering, rather than the rain. making them soggy.

My two favourites are Red/green salad bowl and Land cress. Once you've got Land cress is self seeds everywhere so you're never short of it ever again.

I like Freckles and Salad Bowl. Stryker, a cos type, grew really well last year but were massive. This year we're trying Amaze which is like a red Little Gem.

Half the attraction of growing lettuces is their crazy names!! Like Flashy Trout Back and Frizzy Headed Drunken Woman. Who wouldn't want to have these in their garden? Some of us already do.