Supermarket 'pillow packs' begone! You can grown your own leaves, bouncing with nutrition, taste and colour, whether you have a garden or not, writes Jane Powers
I know it's mid-July, but the sowing season is far from over. A salad leaf takes around a month to reach tender - and highly edible - youth. So sow now, and reap those juvenile leaves in mid-August. Sow again next month, and you'll have fresh saladings until frost sets in. And if you have a greenhouse, polytunnel, or even a cloche, your leaves will last into the winter. Some will just tick over during the dark months, but with the first gleam of spring, they'll wake up, and provide you with welcome early greens.
I'm mad about leafy salads. And I'm mad about leafy salads. I love them from the garden, and I'm infuriated by them in the supermarket. Two little words inflame me. Pillow packs. In the chill compartment of a nearby supermarket, 100g of baby leaves sealed in a bloated polythene pouch costs an indecent €2.49.
Yes, they're convenient and colourful. But that's about it. Picked who knows when (or where), rinsed in chlorinated water, enveloped with gas for "freshness", and refrigerated for their entire post-factory life span. That's a lot of fiddly processing and energy consumption to save you washing 100g of lettuce. Consider the alternative: your own home-grown leaves, bouncing with nutrition and taste, brought from garden to table in minutes. (Treat yourself to an Oxo "Good Grips" salad spinner: it'll cost you the price of a dozen pillow packs, but it takes the pain out of drying leaves.)
You don't even need a garden. Little salady things can be grown in large pots, tubs, window boxes, wooden wine boxes (that's posh) or any old container with a bit of depth and width, and some drainage holes in the bottom. Just place in adequate light, water the compost when it dries out, and harvest the leaves regularly.
Baby leaves may also be grown as "catch crops" between rows of vegetables that have yet to mature, or in spare patches of soil for which you've no plans for a couple of months. When you grow them in the open ground like this, watch out for slugs and snails, who are partial to some of the blander leaves (and oriental mustard, for some reason). Never water susceptible crops in the evening, as the moisture attracts molluscs.
Any vegetable with edible leaves can be used as a baby leaf crop, and that includes roots such as radish and beet; and all the members of the cabbagey clan. So if you have old half-packets of seed hanging around, throw them into a spare bed, or a pot. They may not all sprout, but some certainly will - and it beats putting them in the bin.
Or choose some of the varieties from the list opposite. Grow them in separate containers, in short rows, or in small blocks in the garden. You can combine varieties, but as they may germinate at different rates, the fast sprouters may smother the slow coaches.
On the other hand, if you don't want to think too hard about it, you can buy baby leaf seed mixes (sometimes known as mesclun or "saladini") from seed companies. Most have several different mixtures, which may include various oriental leaves, chicory, rocket, lettuce, purslane, red Russian kale, and leafy herbs such as coriander and chervil.
When the time comes to harvest your succulent little leaves, you can shear the plants to within an inch or two from the ground, from where they will sprout again (known as "cut-and-come-again" cropping); or you can pick the leaves individually. If you sow the seeds densely (about one centimetre apart), then cutting back is better, as the plants are more likely to bolt - that is, start to flower and set seed - when they are closely packed. Giving them the chop helps delay this process. Most crops will sprout again, three or more times.
When they are further apart, I use a leaf by leaf approach, plucking from this and that plant. This is especially beneficial with lettuces, as you're always harvesting young and tender leaves, and the colour is stronger when the plants don't form hearts - from which the light is excluded. Many gardeners prefer to let lettuces grow to adulthood before they harvest them, but the outer leaves on a big head of cos or butterhead are tough old things - too coarse to eat - and there is a lot of waste. With a smaller garden, or where you want to maintain a planting scheme for decorative reasons, choose to pick a bit here and there, rather than letting individual plants mature.
Wild rocket (Diplotaxis tenuifolia) is one of the very best salad species, if you have well-drained soil. Just a scattering of its hot, deeply serrated leaves adds brio to the blandest of greenery. On its own it makes a salad of palate-rousing pepperiness. It is a perennial plant from the Mediterranean, so it enjoys dry, and even poor soil. Left to its own devices, it forms mounds half a metre across of rather coarse leaves; so be sure to give it regular haircuts to induce a flush of new, softer leaves. When grown under glass or in a polytunnel, it is more tender, and keeps popping out leaves all year round - excellent for pepping up bought-in lettuce in winter.
Salad rocket (Eruca sativa) has a milder, easier flavour. It is prone to bolting, especially in hot, dry weather. But when it bolts, give it its head, and let it produce its green-veined, ivory-coloured, cruciform flowers. These are superb additions to a summery salad, adding little dashes of light. Indeed, there are many flowers that may be used to enliven a bowl of leaves, spangling it with vibrant particles, like sequins on a dress. Summer salads shouldn't just taste good, they should look good too, presenting an irresistible prospect of luscious leaves and lightsome flowers - which is why I've just now consumed the contents of our photograph. Salad Daze
Leaves to eat while they're young
Beetroot, cabbage, chard, chicory, claytonia (winter purslane), cress, American land cress, kale, lettuce (all varieties), lamb's lettuce or mâche, mibuna, mizuna, mustard, orach (Atriplex hortensis: both green and red varieties), onion, oriental mustard greens, pak choi, summer purslane, radish, turnip, salad rocket, wild rocket, sorrel, spinach.
Edible flowers to garnish (use in moderation; remove the stamens and pistil first; with composite flowers, ie members of the daisy family, use the petals only, and discard the central boss).
All herb flowers of the Lamiaceae family, ie mint, thyme, sage, oregano, marjoram, lavender; flowers of the onion family (break up into individual florets): chives, garlic chives, onions, leeks; borage, English or pot marigold (Calendula), chamomile, chicory, cornflower, courgette, daylily, nasturtium, primrose, salad rocket, rose (discard the white bit at base of petal), viola.