Looking ahead to summer salads

Imagine walking into the summer greenhouse to pick salad ingredients. There’s a choice of tomatoes, cherry sized, medium, or large.

Trusses of ‘Gardeners’ Delight’ and ‘Sungold’ are laden, and plenty fruits ripe so we try one of each because both are bite-sized, sweet, and moreish. Several of those go in the bowl.

We pass medium-sized fruits of ‘Shirley’ and the large but not so many per plant, of ‘Marmande’ because they’re ideal for sandwiches and not wanted on this occasion. Cucumbers and sweet peppers are.

Cucumbers are next in line and there are just two plants, enough to keep a family going with fruits.

They can be tricky to raise from seed and are most vulnerable at the seedling to young plant stage. Water sparingly and don’t allow their environment to fall below 10 Celsius.

The mini fruiting types,

10 to 15 centimetres long, are our favourites because they’re capable of going up a support cane and continuing along an overhead line in the greenhouse.

Best choice from seed is an F1 hybrid ‘Party Time’ but to ensure a constant supply throughout summer the safe option is to buy a young potted plant of ‘Mini Stars’ - another F1 hybrid which is grafted for greater vigour. These two deliver a continuous stream of mini fruits.

Sweet peppers are relatively easy to grow and so useful in a variety of dishes. We sow the seeds around Easter time and grow them on in the greenhouse but they’d do equally well on a garden room windowsill. Priced at £3.49 for a packet of six seeds, the F1 hybrid, ‘Pillar Sweet Trio’ looks worth trying this year.

Alternatively, see what the local garden centre has by way of plants!