Kitchen Garden

ROCKET

It’s hard to believe that, when Arabella Boxer was writing about rocket in her Garden Cookbook, published in the 1970s, she was ‘unable to find a nursery garden in England who stock the seed’.

Rocket was known and used in salads in Elizabethan times, and a wild variety apparently grew out of the ashes of London’s Great Fire. But it fell out of fashion in the 18th century and was not cultivated again in England for well over 200 years. Elizabeth David, who introduced us to so many good things from the Mediterranean, brought a few packets of rocket seed back from Venice and found that it grew well in her sister’s garden in Hampshire. She also

liked its flavour, which she compared to nasturtium leaves.

There are two types of rocket: the annual ‘salad’ and the perennial ‘wild’. Wild rocket (similar to hedge mustard) has darker, narrower leaves than the annual varieties and, when cut back, will crop again quite quickly and continue to grow in the same position for at least a couple of years. An early sowing of salad rocket should be producing edible leaves this month, but be aware that in dry weather it tends to flower and run to seed. (I am told that the flowers are edible but have yet to try them.)

In my experience, a more successful sowing can be made in August. As the weather cools, bolting should not be a problem, the leaves will have a stronger flavour and they should last until December; longer if under cloches. As rocket belongs to the brassica family, it appeals to the flea beetle, but a later sowing should reduce the risk of attack.

Rocket adds an agreeable edge to so many foods – cheese, salami, shellfish, pasta – but I hadn’t eaten it for breakfast until earlier this year, in Cape Town, with scrambled eggs and mushrooms. I am growing wasabi rocket this year (from D T Brown) which, if it really tastes of the fiery Japanese horseradish, should sharpen up any salad.