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12 Heat-Tolerant Lettuce Varieties
12 Heat-Tolerant Lettuce Varieties to Grow All Season Long
Plant these heat-tolerant lettuce varieties to extend your salad harvests.
Lettuce is the most widely planted salad vegetable in the United States, and it’s easy to see why! It’s nutrient-rich, easy to grow, great for containers and small-space gardens, and delicious. Lettuce is a staple of salads, wraps, sandwiches, tacos and fajitas, and is used in a variety of other dishes—served both hot and cold.
While lettuce is a mainstay in diets year-round, it is actually a cool-season crop and bolts, or goes to seed, in hot weather. When a lettuce plant bolts, it sends up a central stalk of tough, bitter leaves that eventually flowers and produces small, thin seeds accompanied by dandelion-like, wind-dispersed feathers.
However, some lettuce varieties have been bred by gardeners over time to tolerate warmer temperatures and resist bolting early in the season.
Keep reading to see our top picks for heat-tolerant lettuce varieties.
Crisphead Lettuce
This lettuce type is known for having tight heads of crisp, sturdy leaves and a mild flavor.
Anuenue
Its mellifluous Hawaiian name may mean “rainbow,” but this lettuce is a beautiful, uniform bright green. This University of Hawaii introduction bears crisp, sweet, succulent leaves and remains compact as it grows, surrounding its round, tightly packed heart with crisp outer leaves.
A slow grower and bolter, ‘Anuenue’ matures as the days get shorter and the heat gets stronger. Unlike the seed of most lettuce varieties, its seed will germinate at 80 degrees; this variety also has some cool-season hardiness when protected.
Get ‘Anuenue’ lettuce seeds here.
Summertime
True to its name, ‘Summertime,’ this beautiful and delicious crisphead variety tolerates heat and resists bolting. Plants produce large, silvery-green, highly-toothed leaves that form a solid, round head. Its very sweet, incredibly crisp, and extremely juicy leaves earned this variety high marks when it was evaluated at Seed Savers Exchange.
Bred by Dr. James Baggett at Oregon State University in the late 1980s for areas where lettuce can be grown throughout the summer, this variety was donated to Seed Savers Exchange in the 1990s by member Mary Schultz of Monroe, Washington.
Get ‘Summertime’ lettuce seeds here.
Webb’s Wonderful
This English lettuce variety holds up well in heat! Plants form very large and robust heads with crumpled leaves. This variety is slow to bolt and also holds well at market stage, with a fine distinct flavor and good texture. Recommended for planting in the South.
Get ‘Webb’s Wonderful’ lettuce seeds here.
Looseleaf Lettuce
Looseleaf lettuce has large, tender leaves that grow around a central stalk (rather than a compact head) and can be harvested either whole or by the leaf as it matures (cut-and-come-again).
Baby Oakleaf
A dwarf, compact version of ‘Green Oakleaf.’ Tasty and tender medium green leaves are oakleaf-shaped with rounded lobes. This variety withstands hot weather, never tastes bitter, and holds for an extended period.
Get ‘Baby Oakleaf’ lettuce seeds here.
Gold Rush
This cut-and-come-again lettuce variety produces lime-green leaves with a mild, fresh flavor. Leaves are strikingly frilled, curly, and crinkled, adding a unique texture to salads. ‘Gold Rush’ plants hold without bolting for an extended period.
Get ‘Gold Rush’ lettuce seeds here.
Red Salad Bowl
Introduced to U.S. gardeners in 1955, ‘Red Salad Bowl’ is one of Seed Savers Exchange’s best performers. Decorative upright plants reach 6″ tall and 14-16″ wide, and are very slow to bolt. Plants produce beautiful, deep-lobed bronze leaves that are crisp and delicious.
Get ‘Red Salad Bowl’ lettuce seeds here.
Slobolt
Introduced in the mid-1940s by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, MD, this looseleaf lettuce produces large, thick clusters of light-green frilled leaves. As its name suggests, this variety is very slow to bolt, and will produce leaves all summer long. ‘Slobolt’ has a pleasing flavor and recovers quickly after cut-and-come-again harvests.
Get ‘Slobolt’ lettuce seeds here.
Romaine Lettuce
A famous ingredient in Caesar salads, romaine lettuce types form upright heads. The outer leaves of romaine can be tough, while its inner ones are more tender with a memorable crunch and sweetness.
Forellenschluss
Also known as ‘Speckled Trout Back,’ this gorgeous Austrian lettuce produces crisp, green leaves speckled with maroon that have superior flavor. ‘Forellenschluss’ also resists bolting and holds very well in the summer heat. One of our all-time favorites!
Get ‘Forellenschluss’ lettuce seeds here.
Winter Density
Also known as ‘Craquerelle du Midi,’ this variety was developed in England and produces large, dark-green, curled leaves that form upright 8-10″ heads. Sweet, crisp, and succulent, this Bibb-Romaine lettuce variety is slow to bolt in summer heat, yet also cold tolerant.
Get ‘Winter Density’ lettuce seeds here.
Butterhead Lettuce
A more tender lettuce type than crisphead, butterhead lettuce has a mild, sweet taste and forms a loose head with soft, smooth-textured, red-tinged, or pale-green leaves that become lighter toward the center.
Aunt Mae’s Bibb
‘Aunt Mae’s Bibb’ plants are bursting with bright green leaves that tolerate both cold and heat. This variety was donated to Seed Savers Exchange by Nestor Keen, who received seeds from his Aunt Mae in 1937. A very popular variety from the Seed Savers Exchange collection, ‘Aunt Mae’s Bibb’ has received rave reviews that praise its flavor, texture, and growing habits.
Get ‘Aunt Mae’s Bibb’ lettuce seeds here.
Capitan
This Dutch lettuce variety grows quite uniformly for an heirloom, open-pollinated variety—just one reason it earned top honors for Boston-type lettuce in the 1983 Rodale Research Center trials! The loose, light-green heads weigh about five ounces, tolerate cold and heat extremely well, resist lettuce mosaic virus and white rot, and have a distinctive buttery flavor.
Get ‘Capitan’ lettuce seeds here.
Merveille des Quatre Saisons
Also known as ‘Marvel of Four Seasons’, this historic French variety was first described in Vilmorin’s The Vegetable Garden (1885). Plants produce pretty reddish bibb-type rosettes with crisp texture and excellent flavor. The dark red color develops best in cool spring or autumn weather.
‘Merveille des Quatre Saisons’ does well in all sorts of climates and can withstand heat. Five-star reviews praise this variety’s productivity, stability, resistance to pests, and resilience in both 80 degree days and an overnight freeze.