A heart of lettuce in my garden

When I started my vegetable garden this spring (april 2016 - I'm in Northern Italy) I started with planting a lettuce circle.
I had just finished a one day "Introduction to permaculture" course and I wanted to apply the idea of forest garden. I didn't studied it a lot: what I did was to get in love with this idea, feel that it is possible to create "wild" vegetable garden that don't need all the energy (in form of watering, weeding, fertilysing) the usual vegetable garden require and observe the piece of land where I can grow my plants for hours and hours.

[Just a quick post-it: I want to come back with another post on the difference between artificial and spontaneous order - applied in agriculture and in economics]

I created a lettuce circle of approx. two meters of diameter and later I planted all the other plants.

After few weeks I ate a good lettuce.
Then I went abroad for a couple of weeks and when I got back the lettuce had bolted.

[Bolt is a new english term I just learned from this link: Plants, mostly vegetable or herbs, are said to bolt when their growth goes rapidly from being mostly leaf based to being mostly flower and seed based.]

That's when I took a decision: I'll let the lettuce flowering in order to collect the seed for next year.

Now, the end of August, my lettuce heart looks like that.

I took two decisions:
the first I'm collecting the seeds in a paper bag....simple solution but I'm happy that I thought about it

the second I'll cut all the bolted lettuce and I'll put it in my compost bin.
I'd love if next year all the seeds I'll spread inside the compost will generate lettuce all around my garden: that's why I made the lettuce heart for!

If not...well I'll keep you posted.