Easy To Grow Salad Crops
If you’re new to growing vegetables, start with those that give a quick return. Salad crops, spring onions, rocket and pak choi are easy and make a big saving on supermarket prices. I enjoy mixing colours so that red leaved lettuces grow next to green, or varying the leaf shapes. It makes the garden look more decorative and varieties like ‘Red Salad Bowl’ are pretty enough to grow in a mixed border. Last year’s big hit with us was a crisp cos type lettuce called ‘Maureen’ so I’ve ordered this again from Suffolk Herbs.
Potatoes are easy and delicious when dug up just before cooking. The skins simply rub off and the taste is superb. They are excellent for breaking new ground, something we did when we first came here. By planting up a large area with potatoes we transformed the compacted land into productive easy-to-work soil in one season. They can be grown in large containers or sacks but make sure there are good drainage holes. A reliable variety is ‘Charlotte’.
Beans and peas are easy for children to grow, sweetcorn fun to harvest – it’s great to teach how food is produced. Save shrub prunings to use as pea sticks or grow dwarf French beans which don’t require staking.