Bronze Mignonette Lettuce: How to Nurture and Enjoy This Butter Lettuce

If you’re getting bored with all the regular varieties of lettuce, there’s another type you might be interested in.

Bronze Mignonette lettuce is both beautiful and delicious. For anyone who loves to garden it’s a great variety to grow yourself. This variety tolerates a wide range of temperatures and grows quickly.

Keep reading to learn more about Bronze Mignonette lettuce, including how you can grow it yourself.

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Characteristics of Bronze Mignonette Lettuce

Bronze Mignonette lettuce is a type of butterhead lettuce and an heirloom variety originating in Siberia and the surrounding regions in the late 1800s.

It has medium size bright green leaves with bronze tips and streaks and cream-colored hearts. The leaves form around the core of the lettuce head and have a crinkled texture.

Bronze Mignonette lettuce is a smaller variety, only reaching about 8 inches wide at maturity.

This lettuce is known and loved for its crispy texture and smooth buttery flavor.

It’s also a nutritious addition to any diet. High in fiber, folate, iron, and vitamin C, it’s a food that’s low in calories, fat, and sodium. It has anti-inflammatory properties and it’s great for people with heart conditions.

Cooking with Bronze Mignonette Lettuce

The flavor of Bronze Mignonette lettuce makes for a fantastic and colorful salad with your favorite toppings. Throw together a big bowl of salad for a crowd or meal prep with mason jar salads for lunch all week.

Add lots of crunch and texture to sandwiches and burgers by stacking a few leaves up before adding your top bun or slice of bread. The leaves are big enough that you can use them in place of buns and wraps for a low-carb option, too.

Get creative and make a spring roll with veggies, noodles, and any other fillings you like rolled up in a single colorful lettuce leaf.

Grab a couple of turkey or ham slices and your favorite cheese. Lay the meat and cheese on top of a leaf of lettuce and make a quick and healthy roll-up snack.

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Bronze Mignonette Lettuce for the Backyard Gardener

This is a great lettuce variety to grow in your garden for so many reasons, and you don’t need a ton of experience.

It tolerates warmer temperatures well because it sits lower and closer to the soil, so it grows well in any agricultural zone. It can also be grown indoors if you don’t have anywhere to plant it outside.

Bronze Mignonette lettuce is slow to bolt. Bolting is when a plant goes to seed after reaching maturity which usually means you’ve missed your chance to harvest. With this lettuce, you have plenty of time.

Germinating Seeds

You can start your lettuce seeds inside in seed trays to later transplant or directly sow them outside.

Wait until after the last hard frost in your area before planting Bronze Mignonette seeds or seedlings outside. A light frost is okay as lettuce typically likes cooler temperatures. Ideal soil temperatures for germination are around 65 degrees F.

Carefully press your seeds just below the surface of the soil with a few seeds in each hole. Keep the soil watered and seeds should start to sprout within 4 to 10 days.

After 15 days your seedlings are ready to transplant outside in the garden. If you’re growing them indoors, thin out the weaker plants to give the stronger sprouts more space. Each head should be planted 6 to 10 inches apart with rows 12 to 18 inches apart.

To have fresh Bronze Mignonette lettuce ready to harvest regularly, start new seeds every few weeks.

General Care

This leafy green is most likely to thrive in soil that’s fertilized well with good drainage.

Keep your lettuce plants watered without allowing the soil to get soggy or muddy. You can add mulch to properly maintain consistent moisture.

Bronze Mignonette lettuce prefers full sun or partial shade. It does well when planted near a shade crop to shield it from the harsh sunlight on especially hot days.

Watch out for potential problems such as bottom rot, aphids, and caterpillars.

To prevent bottom rot, make sure you’re using soil that drains well and not overwatering.

Pick off and destroy any caterpillars you observe on your plants. Applying a pesticide can help eliminate any pests.

You can also try a more natural approach. Release ladybugs for the aphids and plant trap crops nearby to keep creepy crawlies off your lettuce.

Harvesting Bronze Mignonette Lettuce

It will take about 60 days for your Bronze Mignonette lettuce heads to finish growing.

For baby lettuce, you can start to pick individual leaves after 25 days or harvest whole heads before they reach their full size.

If you harvest individual leaves, try to use them right away. The intact heads will stay fresh in the refrigerator for much longer.

A neat trick is to leave an inch of stem still planted and allow it to continue growing after you harvest. Use a very sharp and sanitized knife to cut the head just above the soil and it will grow back.

You’ll find that the leaves are usually less bitter the earlier you harvest, and it’s best to harvest in the morning.

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Bronze Mignonette Lettuce Has it All

If you’re looking for a new type of lettuce to try in the kitchen or in your garden, look no further than Bronze Mignonette lettuce.

You’ll love its versatility and how simple it is to grow for yourself. As a bonus, it’s just so beautiful.

Head over to our Lettuce Page to learn about all the other amazing lettuce varieties!