Butterhead Lettuce
All Year Round Lettuce is a butterhead variety that lives up to its name with remarkable resilience across seasons and climates. This award-winning cultivar grows to a modest 5, 10 inches tall and reaches harvest in 60, 69 days, making it perfect for succession planting throughout the growing season. Hardy from zones 2, 10, it thrives in full sun and forms a soft, mounding habit that's as beautiful in the garden as it is tender on the plate. What truly sets this lettuce apart is its legendary tolerance for stress, poor soils, and summer heat, qualities that earned it the 1963 All-America Selections award and have kept gardeners returning to it for decades.
Full Sun
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2-10
10in H x ?in W
Annual, Biennial
High
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All Year Round Lettuce earned its reputation as an exceptionally hardy butterhead through decades of reliable performance across diverse growing conditions. Its greatest strength lies in heat tolerance and ability to thrive in challenging soils where other lettuces bolt or struggle, making it the go-to choice for gardeners in variable climates. The tender, delicious leaves form a compact mound that looks as appealing in the garden as it does in the salad bowl, and the non-GMO seeds germinate abundantly at roughly 25,480 seeds per ounce.
All Year Round Lettuce is grown primarily for fresh salads, where its tender butterhead leaves shine with a delicate texture and mild, pleasant flavor. The compact mound form makes it ideal for home gardens where space is limited, and its year-round growing capability means gardeners can plant it in spring, summer, and fall for continuous harvests. Its stress tolerance has also made it popular in educational gardens and beginning gardener contexts, where its forgiving nature builds confidence and results.
Sow All Year Round Lettuce seeds directly into garden soil as soon as the ground can be worked in spring, and again in mid to late summer for a fall crop. Seeds germinate reliably in cool to moderate temperatures and will establish quickly once they sprout.
Begin harvesting All Year Round Lettuce after 60, 69 days when the heads feel firm and the leaves have developed their characteristic tender texture. Harvest in the morning when leaves are crisp and full of moisture. You can pick individual outer leaves as needed, leaving the center to continue growing, or harvest the entire head by cutting it just above soil level with a sharp knife. The variety's mounding habit makes it easy to see when heads are ready, they'll form a compact, dense rosette.
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“This variety's story begins at Cornell University in the 1960s, where plant breeders recognized the need for a butterhead lettuce that could handle real-world garden conditions rather than ideal ones. The result, introduced in 1963, impressed the All-America Selections judges so thoroughly that it won their vegetable award that year, a testament to its breakthrough combination of tenderness, flavor, and practical resilience. That single recognition launched All Year Round into widespread cultivation, and it has remained a standard in home and market gardens ever since, passed down through generations as proof that the best varieties are often those that solve real problems for real gardeners.”