My lil SFG

Angela, Welcome to the Forum!    Very nice looking table top planter/box. The green fort is a little hard to read. It would help if you just use the default color font.

Hiya. Just a heads-up: I had to focus and refocus numerous times reading your light green text. I think others with worse eyes will have even worse problems. It's probably best to just stick with black if you want people to read and respond.

Re lettuce, do you have any space for more heads? Even a one-gallon pot is more than fine for a lettuce plant. I have four red roma lettuces, each in their own 1-gallon pot, and they've been doing great for months. And if you cram lettuces tightly in a square, they can still be productive if you keep picking them to keep their spread modest.

If you can manage it, having more lettuces and using the cut-and-come-again method, taking off a leaf or two or three at a time from each head so as to let the lettuce survive and keep producing, might be worth consideration. It's a very productive use of space with leafy greens. The problem with cutting off all leaves, even if they do come back again, is that you may have to wait a long time to get enough for another salad. Not only does that under-utilize space, but if you're left waiting too long, by the time you get substantial new growth it may get so hot the lettuce simply bolts as summer comes on and grows bitter.

Re just chopping everything off all at once, leaving a stub, and hoping for regrowth, I found it worked for me with cabbage, but don't have the experience to know if it works with lettuce. It just doesn't sound like a first option even if it works.

Hi Angela.  Welcome!  Your box looks very nice.

What is the little black & red thing?

hi! Pick the lower outer leaves of the lettuce and it will continue to make new leaves from the center