Growing Lettuce in Ghana for the City Market

Planting for the cool months, not the rains

Lettuce is a cool-season crop, and most of the failures I see on Ghanaian plots come from planting it in the wrong month. Leaves form best when nights are cool and the days are not too hot. In practice that means the harmattan months, roughly December to February on the coast, and the drier spells in the middle and northern belts when you can irrigate. Growers around Accra, Kasoa and Kumasi tend to plant in those windows and fill the rest of the year with other crops. If you cannot irrigate through the dry months, a rain-fed crop such as watermelon may suit the same ground better.

The rainy season is the hard part. Heavy rain splashes soil onto the leaves, wet leaves stay wet overnight, and downy mildew can move through a bed in a few days. You can grow lettuce in the rains under a shade net on raised beds with good drainage, but it takes more labour and more scouting. Ask your district MoFA office or agric extension officer which varieties and windows they have tested locally. Local trials beat any general calendar, this one included.

Plan backwards from the day you need to sell. Leafy crops do not store well, so the planting date that matters is the one that puts harvest on a day a buyer will actually take the crop.

Seed, trays and the nursery bed

Start with seed from a supplier who can name the variety and give a germination figure on the packet. Butterhead, loose-leaf and cos types differ in head shape and in how quickly they bolt. Pick the type your buyer asks for before you buy the seed, and ask your extension office which types have done well in your district.

Sow one seed to a cell in trays of compost-based mix and cover it lightly. Keep the trays in partial shade and water them with a fine rose in the morning and again in the late afternoon. Seedlings that stay wet in their first week fall over with damping-off, so use clean trays and fresh mix every season rather than reusing the ones from last time.

Transplant at three or four true leaves, usually three to four weeks after sowing, once the roots fill the cell. Harden the seedlings off outside the nursery for two or three days before they go into the bed, or the sun will scorch them.

• Buy seed from a named supplier and check the germination figure on the packet.
• Sow into clean trays with fresh compost mix, one seed per cell.
• Keep trays shaded and water in the early morning rather than at midday.
• Harden off the seedlings for two or three days before transplanting.

Preparing the bed and feeding it with poultry manure

Lettuce wants loose, fertile soil that drains well. Dig the bed to a spade's depth, break the clods, and raise it about 15 cm above the paths so water does not sit around the roots. On heavy soils, a raised bed is often the difference between a crop that lives and one that rots in the first wet week.

Poultry manure is one of the most useful fertilisers for this crop, and I say that as someone who keeps birds. Use well-rotted manure, never fresh droppings. Fresh manure is hot, can burn young roots, and carries germs you do not want on a leaf you will eat raw. Spread the compost or rotted manure over the bed and fork it in at least two to three weeks before transplanting, so it has time to break down and settle.

Keep manure off the leaves at harvest, and avoid heavy nitrogen feeding in the last few weeks before you cut. If the leaves turn pale or the crop grows slowly, get the soil tested through your agric extension officer before you add more. A bed on sandy soil behaves very differently from one on heavy clay, so local advice matters more here than any rule of thumb.

Our guide to using poultry manure as fertiliser covers how we rot and store it on the farm, which is the same method we would suggest for a vegetable bed.

Spacing and the arithmetic of a 200 square metre bed

Spacing decides how large each head grows and how much air moves through the bed. Tighter spacing gives more plants and more disease pressure. Wider spacing gives bigger heads and a bed that drains and dries faster after rain. The table shows plant counts for a 10 by 20 metre bed, so you can order trays before you order seed.

At 25 by 25 cm you need about 3,200 transplants. Add 10 per cent for losses in the nursery and the first two weeks in the bed, which brings the total to about 3,520 seedlings, or 36 trays of 98 cells. Sow those trays about three weeks before the bed is ready, not the week before.

Mark the rows with a string line and set each plant with a stick or a marked cane, not by eye. Eyeballing drifts. After a month the bed looks crowded in one corner and empty in another, and the empty corner is where a buyer will not find a head to pick.

Water: the morning routine that stops bolting

Lettuce is more than 90 per cent water, and it shows every skipped watering within a day or two. Bolting is the point where the plant sends up a flower stalk and the leaves turn bitter. It starts when heat and dry soil stress the plant. A hot, dry week in the dry season can push a bed into bolting before it reaches market size.

Water at the root zone in the early morning, so the leaves dry before the heat of the day and before the evening damp settles in. Midday overhead watering wets the leaves at the worst possible time. A drip line or a watering can with a rose, used consistently, both work. Keep the topsoil moist but not soaked, and check two centimetres down with a finger before you water again.

Mulch between the rows with dry grass or straw. It keeps the soil cool, cuts splash on the leaves, and holds moisture between waterings. Keep the mulch a few centimetres away from the stems so the base does not stay wet.

If young inner leaves show brown edges, look at the watering first. Irregular watering and low calcium in the plant both cause tip-burn. If it returns after you fix the watering, ask your extension officer to test the soil.

What to scout for in the bed each week

Walk the bed every few days with a plan rather than a glance. Turn over a few leaves at the centre of the bed and check the undersides. Most of the losses I have seen started three or four days before anyone noticed them.

• Aphids on the undersides and young leaves. Wash them off early, and watch for sticky honeydew and ants climbing the plants.
• Cutworms at transplant. Look for seedlings cut through at ground level in the morning, and dig around the stem at dusk.
• Leaf miners leaving pale tunnels in the leaves. Pick off the worst leaves and carry them away from the bed.
• Downy mildew: yellow patches on top and fuzzy grey growth underneath, worst after wet nights.
• Soft rot at the base of the heads in wet weather. Remove and bin affected plants at once.

Choose any pesticide with your district plant protection staff and the product label in hand. Follow the withholding period on the label before harvest, and use only products that are approved for leafy vegetables in Ghana. Your extension officer can tell you what is currently available.

Rainy-season lettuce: keeping the leaves dry

If you must grow lettuce in the rains, you are fighting water. The job is to shed it quickly and keep the canopy open. Raised beds drain better than flat ones. Plant at 30 cm or wider so air moves between the plants, and thin any crowded corner early before the disease gets a foothold.

A shade net over the bed cuts splash and heat, but it does not stop disease on its own. Keep the net clear of fallen debris, lift the sides to let air through, and check the undersides of the leaves twice a week. Count the extra hours for spraying, weeding and net checks before you plant. Rainy-season lettuce takes more of your time than the same bed in the dry months, and that time is part of the real cost.

Drop any bed that turns soft at the base within a few days of rain. Leaving it in place lets the rot run into the next head, and the next, along the row.

If the rains are your main working season, the maize guide and the ginger guide cover crops that go into the same wet months, so you can plan labour across the whole plot instead of one bed at a time.

Harvest, cooling and the trip to the buyer

Cut lettuce when the heads are firm, full size and still crisp. Loose-leaf types can be harvested by taking outer leaves over several weeks, but heads are cut whole at the base. Harvest in the cool of the morning, because field heat starts the wilt long before the crop reaches the truck.

1. Cut in the early morning, when the leaves are cool and crisp.
2. Trim yellowing and damaged outer leaves in the field, not at the buyer's stall.
3. Pack the heads into clean, shallow crates and keep them out of direct sun.
4. Rinse only with clean water, and let the heads drain before you pack them.
5. Cool the crates in shade or a cool room, and get them to the buyer the same day.
6. Write down the cutting date, bed number and buyer for next season's planning.

Wash hands and tools between beds, and keep crates clean. Lettuce is eaten raw, so harvest hygiene is not optional. Our record keeping guide has a simple layout you can copy for a vegetable bed as well as a flock.

Selling to city buyers without guessing at prices

City buyers for lettuce include market women at the large wholesale yards, restaurants and hotels, and supermarkets with fresh produce counters. Each one has its own rules on head size, packing and how often they buy. Before you plant, ask two or three buyers what they need each week, which head size they reject, and how they want the crop packed. That conversation will tell you more than any figure I could give you here.

I will not quote lettuce prices, because they move with the season, with the traffic into town, and with whether the rains have hit the growers around you. Check current rates in the market you plan to sell into, and ask your buyer what they paid last week rather than last year. Demand tends to lift around Christmas, Easter and the Eid festivals, when families and hosts buy more fresh produce, so an extra bed timed for those windows can help if you can get seed in time.

Keep a simple sales book with the date, quantity, grade, buyer and the rate you were paid. After one full season you will know which weeks pay and which weeks you should have sold elsewhere.

Lettuce beside a poultry flock

Plenty of our chick customers also run a vegetable bed behind the house. Lettuce suits that kind of setup because it draws on the same clean water, the same manure and the same early morning routine as a flock. The poultry house gives you manure, and the lettuce bed gives you a second crop that sells fresh every week.

Keep birds out of the lettuce. Chickens scratch, peck and foul leaves, and a loose flock will shred a bed in an afternoon. Build a fence around the beds, or keep the gate shut while the birds are out. Use manure from the house only after it has rotted, as described above, and never spread fresh droppings onto leaves you plan to cut.

If you are still deciding whether birds belong on your plot, our day-old chicks page explains what we sell and how the first weeks go. You can place an order from the homepage, or message the hatchery on WhatsApp at +233 24 915 1503 and we will talk through what a small flock means for your manure and your time. Our current price list shows the starting prices for each breed, and if you plan a larger flock, the partner page explains how we work with farmers who buy in volume.

A bed in numbers, with the assumptions shown

The sums below use one 200 square metre bed, one planting in the cool months, 25 by 25 cm spacing, 10 per cent extra seedlings, and a crop that takes roughly seven to eight weeks from transplant to cutting in cool weather. These are working assumptions for the arithmetic only. Your own varieties and site will differ, so measure them in the first season.

• Plants on the bed: about 3,200 at spacing, or about 3,520 seedlings with the extra 10 per cent.
• Seedling trays: 36 trays of 98 cells, sown about three weeks before planting.
• Watering: daily in the dry season, and reduced in the rains when the soil stays wet.
• Labour: scouting every few days, weeding, watering, and one harvest morning per cut.

The money side is yours to work out with current seed, manure and transport rates, and with the buyer prices you can actually secure. Keep the working on paper and check it against what the bed really delivers. Treat the first season as a trial and the second as the plan. The poultry business plan on this site lays out the cost lines for a flock, and the same layout works for a vegetable bed.

Questions farmers ask