You can grow a perfectly good Lettuce plant in a 2-quart mum pot. You can start it from seed now, and be harvesting young leaves in less than a month, or a whole head in however many days the particular variety needs to mature.

Containers are great for Lettuce, because you can move it around to give it the sun it needs, while protecting it from too much sun and heat. Water is a concern, because they need enough, and pots, esp[ecially small ones, dry out quickly.

Start the seeds every week or two until early fall, and you'll have plenty of Lettuce up until late fall.

How much sun/shade does lettuce need? Is it like tomatoes where it needs a lot of sun and water? I don't understand what you mean by start seeds every week or two until early fall - keep putting seeds in the same pot?

5-6 hours of sun is enough. Lettuce doesn't like summer heat.Keep containers moist daily. Starting seeds every week,keeps you in lettuce all the time. Move to shade throughout summer.

Thanks. I had lettuce mixes, spinach, and the weird mesclun mixes early in large and small containers. I used 2 gallon and 14 gallon. I thought I had to wait til fall to grow more. I had planted all at once, had baby lettuce, then medium size, then huge (now - pulling some up). I wish I had planted in time periods, like every 2 weeks. The 2 gallon will be easy to move into the shade. The spinach bolted, but the lettuce still looks good. I do not like the taste of the weird mesclun or niche mixes. I love the regular lettuce mixes, the different colors, the different styles. They are gorgeous. I planted really early in spring.

Lettuce can also be mass produced easily and cultivated in even smaller pots like a small plastic drinking cups or yet smaller net pots in any self-watering planters or diy simple hydroponic or soilless growers. With hybrid soilless and hydroponics horticulture methods, the growing medium can be made of anything, including potting mix, pea gravels, perlite, or strips of jeans, and is secondary as long as the material can minimally support plant roots structurally. There are some variations in how each soiless method or grower deliver moisture, nutrients, and air to the roots, but they all work off utilizing similar horticulture principles and objectives of growing healthier plants more simply and efficiently with less by feeding the roots directly with nutrients and air.