Lettuce Bolting

Question from Madonna:
Wow!  I AM ACTUALLY TALKING TO YOU?? Really??  I use your 1992 So CA month by month gardening guide book as as a staple. (I have been mentally talking to you for years and wishing I could meet and talk to you.)  Just now hitting on this site and then told I could ask you a ques threw me for a loop!

Question:  How do you keep lettuce from bolting? (Ok, I know I sound like a star struck fan which I certainly am and do not apologise for.) I am a good vegetable/flower/gardener but this is my first yr of planting romaine/ bibb and other soft lettuce’s.  I know you need to pick it from the bottom but I have not been picking it as fast as it grows.  So, now I have several plants that are about 2 ft high and I know I am going to loose them. Can this be stopped?

Answer from Pat:
Once lettuce has bolted and is two feet high there really is nothing one can do to stop the process. The only solution is to pull it out, compost the remains, and plant another row in a different place. (Rotating crops keeps diseases from building up in garden soil.) I hope you can get a copy of my newest book since it contains much more information than the 1991 edition you have and still love. After that I wrote another greatly expanded edition published in year 2000. Now ten years later I have written an even more detailed, all-organic edition published in January of this year, 2010. When I revise this one I will be ninety years old, so I’ve already begun.