Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Mother Earth Gardener

    The History of Lettuce

    Feb 13, 2018 6 minutes
    By Nan Fischer

    LETTUCE IS THE FIRST THING I plant in my garden. In early spring, I direct seed lettuce mix, which I can harvest after a few weeks. In the meantime, I plant starts of red and green butter, leaf, and romaine lettuces for harvest when the lettuce mix has grown bitter. Succession plantings feed me well into fall. I’m in love with fresh, homegrown lettuce! The myriad lettuces available today all emanated from a wild lettuce first recorded nearly 5,000 years ago.

    AN ANCIENT GREEN

    Common lettuce, , has its origins in the Middle East. Egyptian wall murals of Min, the god of fertility, depict lettuce in cultivation in about 2700 B.C. The erect plant — similar to modern romaine, with a thick stem and milky sap — had sexual connotations. Min consumed lettuce as a sacred food for sexual stamina, and ordinary Egyptians used the oil of the wild seeds for medicine, cooking, and mummification. Over time, the Egyptians bred their wild-type lettuce to have leaves that were less bitter

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Mother Earth Gardener

    Mother Earth Gardener5 min read
    How to Fight HORNWORMS
    ONE JULY DAY, in two 80-foot rows of tomatoes in our hoophouse at Twin Oaks Community, I found 42 hornworms varying in length from 1 to 4 inches — a collective total of 85 inches of pests! They were stripping the tomato leaves and munching on the gre
    Mother Earth Gardener4 min read
    Korean Natural Farming Basics
    AS A SMALL-SCALE FARMER, I’m constantly looking for ways to fertilize my garden with on-farm inputs. This includes making my own compost from kitchen scraps, leaves, and chicken and rabbit manure. Despite my efforts, I still had to rely on some input
    Mother Earth Gardener6 min read
    The Loy Of The Land
    USE OF THE IRISH FOOT PLOUGH called a loy nearly died out in the 1980s, after centuries of farmers and gardeners using it to dig neat furrows all over the island. From the Irish laí, meaning “spade,” the loy’s fall from grace had been a long time com

    Related Books & Audiobooks