Preserving Lettuce !?!

If you've read my post What's the Deal with Lettuce you know that I find lettuce perplexing. I, as many others, love a good, cool, crisp salad on those hot summer days. But lettuce doesn't grow in the summer; its a fall/winter crop. You can't preserve it until summer either. You can't even preserve it for longer than a couple weeks. ...... or can you?

Just because of my preference to eat hot meals in the winter, I stumbled upon a method of preserving lettuce. Leave it in the garden! These beauties have looked exactly like this for about two months now. No way would they last that long anywhere else! The green one is looking like I better pull it soon, but its been there since December!

Ok, now stop laughing. I know you seasoned gardeners figured this out long ago. But this is my first fall garden, so I am just now figuring out such things. Now only if I could figure out how to get fresh homegrown lettuce during the heat of July.