Lettuce Seeds - Marvel Four Seasons

An eye-catching addition to any plot or garden, these French lettuces bring colour, character and a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ to both the vege patch and the salad bowl. Well-adapted to UK growing conditions, Marvel Four Seasons Lettuces are easy to grow almost all year round, producing medium/large butterhead type lettuces with deep red/purple fringed leaves. Our lettuce seeds are untreated, GMO-free and hand-picked for quality. 

Also known as Merveille des Quartre Saisons, this open-pollinated butterhead lettuce are as tasty as they are beautiful boasting crinkled and colourful leaves, arranged in a loose rosette. Their tender and sweet leaves range in colour from green at the base, through bronze, to fiery red at the margins, adding colour to any salad bowl. Around since the 1800s, this true French heirloom has been appreciated in kitchen gardens for centuries and at Grow Sow Greener, we especially love it due to its tolerance of an amazing range of climates and suitability to the organic or lazy gardener.

• Pack size: 250 seeds
• Type: Butterhead
• Time to germination: 10 -21 days
• When to sow inside: January - December
• When to sow outside: January - December
• Spacing: 10 - 40cm
• Soil preference: Fertile, well-drained
• Light preference: Full sun, part shade
• When to harvest: January - December

How to grow Marvel Four Seasons Lettuces from seed

Lettuce is an extremely easy plant to grow. Simply put, apply shade and moisture when the weather is hot and allow full sun and moisture during the colder months. For faster winter growth, utilise your greenhouse.

Sow your Lettuce Marvel Four Seasons seeds shallowly, two seeds to a pot filled with fine compost or coco soil. Any temperature between 4 and 20 degrees is ideal. After germination, place on a sunny windowsill, or as we recommend, under LED lights, to grow on and develop coco potsbefore planting out, pot and all. Thinning is optional.

Plant a good handful of pots every two to three weeks. Marvel Four Seasons is equally good as a baby leaf, and roughly half of the plants we sow make it to the garden to grow on. It is an exceptionally useful (and tasty) plant to intercrop between courgettes and other veg, keeping the soil moist and reducing the weeding need. As the courgettes grow, simply harvest your lettuce to allow the space. We like this method because it also gives the plot a look of abundance, often lacking in the springtime allotment.

Harvest the whole head, or just pick the outer leaves. Harvesting is best done early in the day and as always, refrigerate dry.

What to feed your lettuce plants

Lettuce plants enjoy nitrogen-rich and free-draining moist soil, loaded with plenty of organic matter (which also helps retain moisture). A good mix of rotten farmyard manure and fish, blood and bone meal with some volcanic rock dust and kelp powder gives them a rich, balanced and diverse diet for strong organic growth over the almost year-long season. This diet will also help the plants to form strong well-developed immunity. By thoroughly preparing the soil with these long-lasting organic fertilisers, you need not continually fertilise with conventional fertilizers which strip your soil of structure and life.

Keeping pests away

The simple truth is pests enjoy lettuce as much as we do. We start our lettuce seeds indoors and under lights to ensure a compact healthy seedling which is large enough to survive an encounter with a slug or pigeon. Lettuce seedlings are susceptible to wind, creating a “helicopter” effect, breaking them at the stem. By giving your lettuce the strongest start to life and proper nutrition, you can minimise the potential damage caused and get a great crop.

Grow Sow Greener is a regenerative gardening company advocating back to the roots tried and tested methods. We don’t recommend the use of or sell any extremely profitable pesticides, herbicides or inorganic fertilizers. They are detrimental to the health of your entire garden ecosystem from microbe to mammal.

Instead, encourage birds, hedgehogs and toads to take up residence, as they are all voracious predators of snails and slugs, and provide a water source, shelter and winter food for birds. When ordering Marvel Four Seasons lettuce seeds from Grow Sow Greener, we reccomend sowing sunflower seerd. Beautiful plants in their own right, throw a handful into a sunny corner to attract beneficial insects during the summer months, whilst their seed heads provide a great source of food for your overwintering feathered friends.