Butterhead Lettuce seeds for the kitchen garden that intends to actually produce butterhead lettuce this year. Butterhead lettuce is what salad looks like when it has been given adequate space and something to do.

Butterhead Lettuce is soft, loose-headed lettuce with buttery texture and mild flavour -- the easiest and most useful salad base. Each packet is hermetically vacuum-sealed -- removing the oxygen that causes standard paper seed packets to lose germination viability within approximately one year. State law requires a 3-year viability label on sealed packaging. NASA research on hermetic seed storage indicates viability of up to 10 years under proper conditions. Every packet is non-GMO and germination-tested at independent third-party labs before it earns its Japanese woodblock print artwork.

How to Grow Butterhead Lettuce from Seed

Sowing and Germination

Direct sow in spring or autumn. Cool season. Thin to 25cm for full heads.

Care and Harvest

Soft, loosely packed heads with buttery texture and mild flavour. 55-75 days.

Why Vacuum-Sealed Seeds Last Longer

Standard paper seed packets are permeable to oxygen and moisture -- the two primary causes of seed degradation. Most paper-packaged seeds begin losing germination viability after approximately one year, contributing to significant garden-industry waste: packets purchased, not planted, expired, discarded. Shido Seeds are hermetically vacuum-sealed. The packet does not expire quietly in a drawer. It waits.

About the Packaging

Every Shido seed packet is illustrated in the style of Japanese 1910s woodblock printing -- designed and drawn in-house by Chive, the Toronto ceramics studio that has been exhibiting at the Chelsea Flower Show in London every year and does not, as a matter of principle, sell to big-box retailers. Customers collect the packets as a series. This was not the original plan.