of course you can propagate lettuces out of seeds. but you have to be a very experienced gardener to be successful. you have to sow in rows as thin as you can because you have to thin out the young plants afterwords. but that´s not all. if you start indoor in spring because it is still too cold outside and you don´t want to wait for your lettuce until the end of summer, you have to prick out the very fine young plants before you can set them out on your field or flower box. i find it very complicated and out of millions of seeds, at the end i got only two lettuces. so if you are a newcomer, just avoid failings and buy some lettuce plants at the garden market.

when you plant the lettuce leave enough space for every single one. they still look very small but they will need about 60 to 60 cm space very soon. to start the fight against pests very early, give a collar around every plant. you can buy these collars at the garden market or you can cut an empty 1,5 to 2 liter plastic bottle into 5 cm rings. pull a ring over every plant and push them a little bit into the earth. maybe some snails won´t be repelled by that, so additionally you have to fight them. depending on your preferences, with snail granules or, the more organic way, with the beer trap. therefore you have to dig a hole at the border of your lettuce bed, big enough for a glass. fill it with beer and place it inside the hole. it should be on ground level so that the snails can enter it easily. in theory they love the beer more than the lettuce. try out what works best in your garden.