Valerianella locusta
Green Cambrai lamb's lettuce, mâche, corn salad, lamb's lettuce, field salad: the latter name, “corn salad,” comes from its old habit of growing spontaneously in stubble fields after the harvest. It is the quintessential winter salad, the one that grows when nothing else does — and one of the few plants content with barely worked soil.
Characteristics:
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Winter salad: harvested from October to March, when the vegetable garden is empty.
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Very hardy: withstands frost without protection and regrows after severe freezes.
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Mild flavor: delicate, slightly nutty taste and a characteristically tender texture.
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Undemanding: grows in lightly worked soil and requires very little maintenance.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: full sun to partial shade.
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Soil: ordinary, moist, and above all firm rather than worked. This is its main peculiarity: unlike most vegetables, it dislikes freshly dug soil and prefers ground that has remained firm after a previous crop. No amendments are needed.
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Method: sow from July to September for a winter harvest, broadcast or in rows spaced 20 cm apart. Firm the soil after sowing — press it down firmly with the back of a rake or a board: this is the decisive step for good germination. Cover only lightly and keep moist. See how to sow your seeds.
Maintenance advice:
- Water with a fine spray until germination, while the weather is still warm in late summer. After that, there is almost nothing to do.
- No thinning is necessary: lamb's lettuce is grown densely, as a carpet.
Harvesting advice:
- Cut the entire rosettes at ground level with a knife rather than pulling them up: the soil stays clean and washing is much quicker.
- Harvest as needed: it keeps perfectly well in the ground all winter, even under snow.
Beneficial combinations:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- Its dense carpet covers the soil throughout winter, protecting it from nutrient leaching, erosion, and frost — a genuine service to soil life during the harshest season.
- If allowed to flower in spring, its tiny pale-blue flowers are visited by the year's very first small pollinators.
Uses:
- Raw in salads, alone or with beetroot and walnuts — the classic combination of northern France. It can also be cooked like spinach or used in a velvety soup. Wash it carefully, as sand collects in the heart of the rosettes.
Harvesting your own seeds:
As a biennial, it goes to seed the following spring: leave a few rosettes to flower, then harvest the stems when the seeds turn brown, before they fall. Lamb's lettuce also readily self-seeds from one year to the next. See how to save your seeds.
Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our conviction: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
The salad that grows when nothing else does.
