Growing Salad Leaves

Salad leaves are one of the easiest foodie garden products, and one of the most economical too.

While bags of supermarket leaves cost a pound or more, with contents that seemingly start to wilt as soon as the bag is opened, a packet of seeds costing around the same amount can keep you in fresh leaves the whole summer long.

Many varieties you can grow are 'cut and come again', meaning that you can harvest leaves from the same plant more than once, with leaves regrowing from the stem up to four or five times in a season. These kinds of salad leaves don't usually require much in the way of cultivation - sprinkle the seeds onto some compost in a container, water in, wait for germination, and harvest leaves as required.

There are thousands of different leaf varieties available for growing, but some of the most popular include lollo rossa (a red variety of heartless lettuce), and rocket (including both herb and wild varieties).

Many varieties of cress are worth growing, and not just the kind you grew in cotton wool in your schooldays. Land cress has a similar flavour to watercress but doesn't require the specialist growing conditions. It is also known as American cress. Greek cress has a sharp peppery flavour with a hint of lemon.

More on growing salad leaves

BBC Gardening - Grow salad plants - "Salads crops are easy to grow yourself, and can be fitted into even the smallest of gardens. Once you've tasted a lettuce straight from the garden you'll never want to buy one again..."

Countrylovers.co.uk - "Be inspired as exotic salads expert Richard Bartlett returns with a new article on his experiences of growing unusual salad crops..."

thebeginner.co.uk - Growing Salad Crops - "Salad crops can be grown directly in the ground in or containers, I would recommend growing them in peat free compost in containers, this will avoid the problem of weeds getting tangled up with your crop..."