Leaves & salads
Lamb's lettuce
Valerianella locusta
Timings for your region
Suggested: Moderate · Explained in the glossary
Sow outdoorsearly August – early October
Harvestearly October – late March
Practical tip
The winter salad — it stands under snow and is cut rosette by rosette as needed. A fleece makes January picking pleasanter.
Origin & history
Lamb’s lettuce began as an arable weed in the grain fields of Central Europe and was gathered from the wild for centuries before it was deliberately cultivated from the 16th and 17th centuries — hence the German name Feldsalat, “field salad”. Botanically it is not a lettuce at all but a relative of valerian. Few vegetables carry so many regional names: Ackersalat, Rapunzel and Mausohrsalat in Germany, Nüsslisalat in Switzerland, Vogerlsalat in Austria.
Varieties
Large-leaved, fast-growing varieties such as “Holländischer Breitblättriger” give plenty of bulk in early autumn but are only moderately winter-hardy. For picking from December onwards use the small-leaved, dark green types — “Vit”, “Verte de Cambrai” or “Dunkelgrüner Vollherziger” — which take more frost and rot less readily where they stand. Lamb’s lettuce is sold almost exclusively as open-pollinated seed, and the seed is cheap: sow generously and thin the rows later.
Care
The soil must not have been freshly manured — lamb’s lettuce gets by on what the previous crop left behind. Watering the drill is what matters: above roughly 20 °C soil temperature the seed germinates badly, so for August sowings water the furrow and shade it with a board or fleece until the first seedlings are up. Germination is slow anyway, often two weeks. The bed has to go into winter weed-free, because you cannot hoe between the flat rosettes later on.
What can go wrong
In crowded stands the rosettes stay wet for days after rain, and then grey mould and downy mildew set in: yellow leaves, grey coatings, mushy hearts. So sow in rows 15 cm apart rather than broadcasting, air the fleece on mild days and take yellowed leaves out as you harvest. The second typical mistake is rotation: lamb’s lettuce should not go on the same bed year after year, or the pathogens build up in the soil.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Cut it off with a sharp knife just above the root so the rosette stays together — picking single leaves is fiddly and they fall apart. Wash thoroughly in several changes of water: there is nearly always grit between the leaves of a rosette sitting that close to the ground. After frost it tastes nuttier, because the plant lays down sugar. Loosely bagged it keeps about three days in the fridge.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.