Weedy Lettuce

Here is some oak leaf lettuce that has just been thinned to 6" spacing. 6 inches is a little close and can make the plants susceptible to bugs and diseases. Nothing seems to be bothering the lettuce right now so i'm going to let them crowd together to shade out the weeds. Lettuce is not to far removed from its ancient ancestor and does a pretty good job of pest control on its own. a few weeds don't hurt when harvesting head or leaf lettuce but if this was a row of salad mix then every single weed would have to be picked out by hand. That is partly why the prebagged stuff costs so much. There are still a few weeds so a 3rd and final trip through hoe should keep it weed free for another 3 weeks until harvest.