During my growing-up years, “lettuce” meant “iceberg lettuce,” although occasionally my mother would show up at the house with a strange, leathery substance known as “romaine.” While we grew many fruits and vegetables on the place, lettuce was apparently not among them. When a head of iceberg lettuce came into the house, there were three steps to making it last long enough to eat it: first, you peeled off the bedraggled outer leaves. Next, you held it upright and rapped it sharply on the counter. This would cause the core to break loose, which you would then remove. Third, you wrapped it in a damp dishcloth. Then, you tried to eat it fast enough to keep ahead of the translucent, slimy stage that it was so ready to lapse into, and sometimes you succeeded.

These days, when I look at the lettuce in the produce section of the local grocery store, I am always bemused by the sheer size of the bundles. I really don’t care for the iceberg lettuce, since by the time it reaches Craig, Alaska it is truly on its last legs, and romaine lettuce tastes bitter to me. My third option is leaf lettuce, and the bunches they want me to buy are enormous. Far too much for us to eat before it goes bad, even though it usually lasts longer than the other kinds. And when I get it home, I have a remarkably hard time getting myself to give it the wet towel treatment, and usually just put it in the fridge still in its plastic bag. This bit of secret sloth does not increase the shelf life of my lettuce.

I do wish they would let me buy smaller amounts. I have been known to surreptitiously break a bunch of bananas in half so I can buy a smaller number, but I stop short at doing this with the lettuce. You can break bananas without bruising the fruit, but I’m not sure you can do the same with lettuce, especially if you are trying to operate without attracting attention to yourself.

So, what to do, except keep throwing out huge portions of lettuce? I have embarked upon an action research project in growing lettuce indoors. Here’s what I’ve got so far: two window boxes, each with grow lights suspended overhead, in which I stagger my plantings in the hope that I will always have a new crop coming on. I do enjoy picking just a few leaves here and there to put on my sandwiches. Two of my plants even “bolted” while I was out of town for an extended period, and soon I will have about five million seeds to choose from. I’ve often heard it said, and it certainly applies here, that where there’s a will, there’s a way.