Grow lamb's lettuce in your own garden: We present suitable varieties and give tips and tricks from sowing, care and fertilization to harvesting.
Most people are familiar with the common lamb's lettuce (Valerianella locusta) simply as lamb's lettuce. However, there are many more names, such as Rapunzel, lard herb, field lettuce, lamb's lettuce or nut lettuce. Lamb's lettuce is a popular leaf lettuce, especially during the winter. The exquisite taste is accompanied by some lamb's lettuce varieties with a wonderful, very pleasant nutty aroma.
This fine lettuce variety is native to central and southern Europe, but also to areas in North Africa and western Asia. During the 19th century, people discovered the benefits of lamb's lettuce, which is so popular today. Before that time, it was only known as a wild herb on arable land. Its name, field lettuce, comes from this time, because at that time it grew weed-like in fields. Cultivation in German gardens is highly recommended. A greenhouse is a good option, because the gardener can harvest fresh lamb's lettuce all winter long.
The best lamb's lettuce
There are various types of lamb's lettuce that are recommended for cultivation in the home garden or in the greenhouse. You can order seeds or plants online or purchase them from your trusted garden center. Here we have summarized a few popular ones for you:
- Accent: Uniform, rapid growth; grows upright.
- Amely: Extremely fast-growing variety with rounded, deep green foliage; high yield.
- Baron: Fast growing variety; cultivation in open ground or greenhouse; good yield.
- Cirilla: Beautiful rosettes and glossy deep green leaves; high yield and good tolerance to powdery and downy mildew.
- D'Olanda A Seme Grosso: Traditional Italian variety; fast growing; long and thick leaves; very aromatic and tender.
- Dark Green Fullhearted: Provenvariety with small, rounded leaves; slow growth but robust.
- Elan: High yield; elongated leaves; Tolerance to downy mildew.
- Etampes: Traditional variety with very deep green leaves.
- Favor: Good optics; can be grown all year round; robust against downy mildew.
- Gala: New breed with high yield; cultivation in open ground and greenhouse; large, long leaves; Tolerance to downy mildew.
- Dutch Broadleaf: Popular strain for outdoor growing.
- Verte de Cambrai: Small and deep green leaves with a pronounced rosette.
- Fully hard 3: Fast growing variety with pretty rosettes.
Growing lamb's lettuce: step-by-step
- The lamb's lettuce has no great demands, but the soil should be fresh and nutrient-rich. To achieve this, you can improve the soil with a nutrient-rich vegetable soil such as our peat-free Plantura Organic Tomato & Vegetable Soil.
- Depending on the variety, sowing can take place from the beginning of August to mid-September, but also as early as the beginning of March. Fresh lamb's lettuce from our own garden is available almost all year round!
- The seeds should be pressed about 1 cm deep into the soil and a distance of about 2 cm between the individual seeds is recommended. Sowing can also be done unevenly, but this can cause difficulties in weeding and orderly planting is also more practical for harvesting.
- Depending on the outside temperature, the lamb's lettuce will start to germinate after about 2-3 weeks.
- Autumn is the main harvest time for lamb's lettuce, but during a mild winter you can harvest in the greenhouse well into March. Please remember to cover the plants with enough fleece or foil over the winter.
- If you don't harvest the inner leaves, the lamb's lettuce will sprout again in the spring. Be sure to harvest before flowering!
Important tip: Please only harvest what you need because lamb's lettuce has an extremely short shelf life.
The winter purslane or postelein can also be harvested very early in the year. You can find everything about the unknown vegetable in our special article on Postelein.