Each year we have a couple of rows of salad leaves growing. If you don’t have a vegetable patch, you really only need a pot to grow some lettuce. We don’t just stick to the usual cos or iceberg but spice things up a little with mizuna, pak choi, rocket, tatsoi, and red mustard (an oriental salad mix is great). We also grow nasturtiums and borage, for both their flowers and leaves; and plenty of herbs such as basil, chives, coriander and mint.
You can sow outdoors from mid-spring to late summer, sowing thinly at 1cm (½in) deep. But you don’t need to do it in rows – simply sprinkle a mixture of seed lightly on the top of soil surface, then cover with about 1cm of compost.
As the seed grows, thin out some seedlings by removing with your thumb and forefinger. This gives more room for plants to develop. You can eat these. You will usually be able to cut the salad leaves three or four times, so best was to have salad leaves all summer is to sow several times, perhaps a month apart, depending really on how much you want to eat.
