My wife, Nancy, and I have been eating our own lettuce every day since late March. We planted some in our new cold frame last November and harvested it once regular freezing ended this spring.

Our effort to grow lettuce came about partly because we like it but mostly because our grandson, James, 7, told us that one of the few vegetables he will eat is “baby lettuce.” (Actually, he also eats cucumbers, red peppers, corn and baby spinach, but baby lettuce is easy to grow.)

We grow cut-and-come-again varieties, so we can continue cutting the same patch of lettuce over four to six weeks. It is easy to do.

If you don’t have a cold frame, sometime over the next couple of weeks is the last time that you can plant leaf lettuce and get a crop ready to cut until the ground freezes and/or the snow comes. It is worth the effort to have fresh, green vegetables coming all through the fall.

Take a spading fork and dig up a section of your garden, about 2 feet by 4 feet. Then smooth the soil with your hand. Sprinkle the lettuce seed over the soil so you have about 10 seeds in each square inch. Rub your hand over the seeds again.

Sprinkle on a little fertilizer – we use an organic 4-3-3 fertilizer (4 percent nitrogen, 3 percent phosphorous and 3 percent potassium). Now water heavily. After this, water the equivalent of an inch a week.

Once you have leaves that are about 2 inches long, start cutting and keep cutting until the lettuce stems get big or the snow comes.