Purple Fusion Lettuce is an exclusive open-pollinated cultivar bred specifically for summer performance without sacrificing the vibrant purple color that makes it visually stunning on the plate. This compact lettuce reaches harvest in just 55 days from transplants and thrives across all hardiness zones, from 1 to 12, making it accessible to gardeners everywhere. It germinates best between 60-70°F and tolerates frost, allowing you to extend your growing season into cooler months. The variety offers reliable summer performance with reliable purple pigmentation, a combination that's surprisingly difficult to achieve in lettuce breeding.
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1-12
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Moderate
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Purple Fusion delivers summer heat tolerance paired with striking color, a rare combination in lettuce breeding. Its compact growth habit means it fits neatly into small spaces, requiring just 6 inches between plants and 12 inches between rows. At 55 days from transplants, you'll move from seedling to dinner table quickly, and its frost tolerance lets you push both spring and fall harvests further than many other varieties.
Purple Fusion works beautifully in fresh salads where its color adds visual interest alongside its crisp texture. The compact growth habit makes it equally suited to individual salad bowls or larger mixed green platters. Home gardeners and market growers can succession plant every 2-3 weeks for a continuous supply of either full heads or harvested leaves for salad mix throughout the cool season.
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Start seeds indoors 4-6 weeks before your transplant date. Maintain soil temperatures between 60-70°F for reliable germination, keeping conditions cool and consistently moist. Johnny's Selected Seeds indicates approximately 16,000 plants per ounce of seed, so sow accordingly depending on your transplant needs.
Transplant hardened-off seedlings into the garden as early as your soil can be worked in spring, or time fall plantings to mature before heat stress. Space transplants 6 inches apart within rows spaced 12 inches apart. This lettuce is frost-tolerant, so light frosts won't harm established transplants.
You can direct sow Purple Fusion seeds outdoors into prepared beds, planting them at the same timing as transplants (early spring or timed for fall maturity). For continuous harvest, sow every 2-3 weeks.
Purple Fusion reaches harvest 55 days after transplanting. You can harvest individual outer leaves once the plant is established, or wait for a full compact head to form before cutting the entire plant at soil level. For a continuous supply of salad mix, make one cut when plants reach usable size and allow regrowth, or harvest the entire head and start fresh with new transplants from your succession planting schedule.
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