BEST DRESSED
GROWING EDIBLE LEAVES IS EASY AND REWARDING AND MEANS THAT A HANDFUL OF DELICIOUSNESS IS ALWAYS WITHIN REACH
There is an anorak element to vegetable growing which some of us are not excited by: we just want to grow something that is easy, pretty, and tastes better than its supermarket equivalent. Thank goodness then for Joy Larkcom and the re-issue of her updated classic The Salad
Garden, a succinct growing guide that is indeed joyous.
Larkcom reminds us that expertise in edible leaves has not always been a niche hobby; a salad in the 17th century included dozens of different varieties, including the cultivated and the wild. Foraging has long been commonplace all over Europe, just as it used to be here in the UK, when everyone knew the difference between wild garlic and lily-of-the-valley (the latter is poisonous).
As we gingerly re-acquaint ourselves with the skills that our not-so-distant ancestors took for granted, it is a great comfort to have the straightforward and immensely readable Joy Larkcom setting us straight.
The main point she makes is that salad-growing is rewarding and lettuce in particular is easy. Adding fresh, raw ingredients to a meal brings with it a level of kudos that far outweighs effort.
If you are muddled about types of lettuce, such as loose leaf (which you can keep picking) versus hearting (which is cut as a whole lettuce), and you’ve never been quite sure what a potager is – or even how to pronounce it – then read on.
THE ARTISTIC PLOT
“Expertise in edible leaves has not always been a niche hobby; a salad in the 17th century included dozens of varieties”
Strictly speaking, a potager is the place where ingredients for potage, or soup, are grown. Sadly, the more attractive French pronunciation has been rejected in favour of a more phonetic English. Yet the poetry of a decorative kitchen garden is thriving, and if your ambition is set on salad, a potager, in which
different types of crops are grown together, makes sense. The textures and colours of hearting lettuce, such as red-speckled cos ‘Freckles’ or elegant French ‘Reine de Glace’ can be grown against loose-leaf varieties such as frilly red ‘Lollo Rosso’ and angular oakleaf lettuce ‘Cocarde’, while onions and carrots grow on either side, in any pattern that you feel like creating.
Mixing lettuce with other salad crops like tomatoes, French beans and radishes, creates a scene that is decorative and industrious. Adding herbs and flowers intensifies these qualities, since companion plants can attract pollinators while putting off certain pests. Some herbs just seem to go with salad crops – not just because of their flavour: basil is a good companion to tomatoes as it attracts white fly away from the more precious crop, while marigolds repel white fly. Ditto strongly scented coriander with carrots. Companion plants act as a ground cover, discouraging weeds while rationalising space taken up by, say, asparagus: instead of growing spears in a sea of bare earth, asparagus can be paired with parsley. This combination can be self-perpetuating since asparagus is a long-lived perennial, and parsley seeds itself around.
A vegetable plot or kitchen garden can be just as charming as a potager, while producing a practical volume of the things you most want to grow. Peas for instance: the taste of fresh peas is not available to buy, and sowing them once, in a small potager, is not going to be enough.
A plot can be as straightforward as a rectangle cut out of turf, or a series of enclosed raised beds (with less bending over). For a salad-oriented plot that is more three-dimensional, make use of giant teepees for beans (from any wooden poles) and arches for climbing squash as well as flowers.
BACK DOOR LEAVES
Loose-leaf lettuce can be sown in the open ground as a quick crop, or a space filler. Sown on potting compost and covered in a thin layer of vermiculite, this kind of non-hearting lettuce is also ideal in a pot. Positioned by the back door, with edible flowers in further pots, such as nasturtium, violas and pot marigold, cut-and-come again lettuce is there when you want it. Pick leaves around each plant, giving them time to re-sprout (this will be two or three times eventually), as you gather from several plants at once. For the first-time vegetable grower, a packet of mixed salad leaf seeds is a rewarding place to start. They do not need to be thinned; the seed is sparingly scattered and firmed down on the surface of fresh potting compost, with just a handful of vermiculite sprinkled over the top. These mixtures are called misticanza in Italian (mesclun in French) and Joy Larkcom coined the term saladini.
Watering is important for lettuce grown in pots: seeds will not germinate in dry soil. After germination, deep watering is essential: wait for water to drain out of the bottom, instead of watering little and often. Terracotta pots retain moisture better when lined with an emptied, cut-to-size compost
bag; mulching the surface with a layer of fine bark chip or stones will also prevent water evaporation. Shop-bought compost is expensive: fill the bottom half of a pot with garden soil or homemade compost, with the sterilised stuff on top, to prevent weeds sprouting. Suitable salad crops for pots are tomatoes (they ripen more quickly than in open ground), dwarf runner beans and French beans, and bush cucumbers.
HOUSE SALAD
In a similar way to salads grown in pots, lettuce can be sown indoors, especially in winter. In this case, it is treated as a seedling crop and loses its cut-andcome again status. A good tip from Joy: when the crop is over, scrape off the cut stalks, add another layer of compost on top and sow directly on to that.
The most logical thing to do if you want chillies, tomatoes and peppers is to seek a well ventilated greenhouse, even in summer. Salad crops that do not have to battle it out with the elements are infinitely more productive (though a house or garden wall goes some way to providing shelter). Once you become more organised, hardy lettuce such as the cos-like ‘Rouge d’Hiver’ and butterhead ‘Merveille de Quatre Saisons’ can be sown in autumn for an early start in spring. Seeds of hearting lettuce are most easily sown into modules and planted out as plugs. With this kind of variety, as our ancestors knew, each bite of salad could be more marvellous than the last.
“Positioned by the back door, with edible flowers, cut-and-come-again lettuce is there when you want it”