Tag Archives: lettuce

Happy New Year!

01 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by in container growing, gardening without plastic, kitchen garden, sustainability

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Nope – not quite crazy (yet). It may be September and only barely autumn, but the veg grower’s new year starts here.

My list of crops to get under way for the new season right now includes autumn-sown onions, hardy broad beans, spring cabbages and salads – lots and lots of salads.

Rosso di Treviso chicory – sown densely to harvest young as baby leaves

I grow my salads in big containers, and in one square-metre veg bed just by the gate where it’s handy to pick. This is a really good trick for squeezing lots of variety out of a very small space – and with salads you rarely need very much of anything at a time, so this is a technique I’ve used in large gardens and small.

My square metre salad bed is made of reclaimed scaffold boards, cut into metre lengths then screwed onto uprights, 5cm x 5cm and cut about 15cm longer than the width of the boards – this means you end up with something that looks like a box on short legs. Use a mallet to knock these into the ground, checking to make sure it’s all level, and your raised bed is ready to use.

Rocket by name… rocket by nature! These were up within a week

Mine is filled with a 50:50 mix of home-made garden compost and soil dug out of the garden – so it’s 100% sustainable, zero plastic and pretty much zero carbon as there’s no transport required (apart from by wheelbarrow). You can of course buy in soil improver instead of the garden compost (while making a note to self to make yourself a compost bin/wormery/bokashi bin asap); and topsoil is likewise available from the garden centre if you have to.

Divide the space into roughly equal sections: in this case, nine squares, roughly marked out with canes. I am getting mildly annoyed with this setup now though as I keep knocking them out of place: when I get a moment I will screw some short screws into the top edge of the bed so they’re sticking out, and tie string to them in a grid to mark out the squares instead.

I’m relying on bamboo canes to divide up the space at the moment, here keeping mizuna in check

So I have nine varieties of salad growing in this space:

  • ‘Marvel of the Four Seasons’ winter lettuce raised under cover till they’re seedlings (safer from slugs) then planted out once large enough
  • ‘Rossa di Treviso’ chicory – sown direct and harvested as baby leaves when they’re not as bitter
  • Coriander – sown direct (as it always should be)
  • ‘Red Frills’ mustard sown direct – this has grown much faster than everything else and is prolific but delicious. I can’t quite keep up with the harvest so I chop it back occasionally and add what I can’t eat to the compost heap.
  • American land cress: a great watercress substitute that needs only damp soil to thrive. It’s easy as anything: sow direct and it keeps you going right through winter.
  • ‘Moss Green Curled’ parsley: sown direct, and just a few seedlings up so far, but then parsley is notoriously difficult to germinate and even a few plants is enough to fill a small square after all.
  • Rocket – the clue is in the name: lush green seedlings to snip young rather than letting it get too peppery
  • Claytonia – one of my favourite winter salad ingredients, a curious succulent leafy green that’s very easy to grow (sow direct) with a crisp texture and a sweet, fresh green flavour
  • Mizuna: about as easy as it gets. Indestructible and very tasty oriental salad leaf: sow direct and harvest young.
The Red Frills mustard is going a bit bonkers but it’s absolutely delicious so I don’t mind that much

The trick is to make sure it stays damp, feed with high-nitrogen home-made nettle feed weekly in summer and perhaps fortnightly in winter, and harvest regularly: you should get 2-3 cuts from each square before it’s finished (for lettuce, harvest leaf by leaf). Then when you’ve finally picked the last from each square – I’ll probably be picking this lot till early spring before it’s spent – clear the square, add a few handfuls of home-made garden compost like a mulch, and resow each square straight away to keep the crops coming.

Pick of the month: November

16 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in kitchen garden

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Lettuce ‘Intred’

potm_intred_lettuce

Sometimes things are not what they seem.

This, for example, is supposed to be a summer lettuce. It is crisp, upright and elegant: a red Cos variety which is about as handsome as a lettuce gets.

I sowed a big tray of it for a photoshoot I was doing earlier this year so had quite a lot to spare. I decided therefore to stuff the remaining young plants into any corner of the veg beds I could find. Never could bear to throw away a good plant.

Well. That was July. And here we are, mid-November, and I’ve been picking one or two a week ever since.

They are as crisp, densely-hearted and handsome as ever, with a lovely smooth, sweet flavour and none of the bitterness you so often find in lesser lettuces (particularly in my garden, where watering is reserved for the greenhouse and pots only).

Even better: like many red lettuces, the slugs really don’t like them much. There’s the odd experimental munch from an outside leaf or two, but not a single slimy surprise inside. So lovely just to be able to quarter a lettuce picked from outdoors without having to dissect it leaf by leaf to check for unwanted passengers.

And as if all that wasn’t enough to recommend it, after over three months in the ground those still uneaten are showing only the first tiny twinges of bolting. It’s no more than a slight protrusion of the (still full, firm and sweet) heart above the outside leaves though: they don’t really mean it. If things carry on like this I’ll still be happily cutting Intreds on Christmas Day.

So this is the summer lettuce that’s actually a winter lettuce. It’s also now firmly on my list of must-grows, alongside the Merveille de Quatr’ Saisons and the Black-Seeded Simpson. So lovely when you find a new favourite.

 

Lettuce, pray?

24 Friday Feb 2012

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It’s lettuce. But look closer:
how many kinds can you spot?

A lettuce is a lettuce is a lettuce, right?

Well – not exactly.

As I was drawing up my (still lengthening) shopping list for VP’s 52-week salad challenge – three lettuce varieties sown, about 33 to go – I began to realise that there is a whole lettucey world out there of which I know very little.

My VP-powered list began sprouting ever more names: Batavian, Butterhead, Romaine…

I’m familiar, in a woolly sort of way, with some of these through buying them in the shops, and as it turns out I’ve grown most types at one time or another, without taking much notice of what they were or what they did. But that’s about it.

So I went and did a bit of digging around to see if I could find out what’s out there. Here’s what I came up with:

Batavian (Black Seeded Simpson, Lettony, Rouge Grenobloise)

The British Leafy Salad Association website (don’t get excited: it is, how can I put it, not designed for gardeners) describes this as ‘non-hearty’ – I beg to disagree, as when I grew Black-seeded Simpson last year, thinking it was a loose-leaf, I was a little disconcerted when it did in fact form a heart. A very loose one, it’s true, but undeniably hearty.

Anyway, Batavian lettuces are known for their thick, crinkled leaves, crisp texture and exceptional flavour – usually described as nutty, and I found it quite savoury in comparison to other lettuces. It’s very complex, very interesting, and quite unlike any other lettuce I’ve ever eaten. Oh, and they’re enormous, stand well after maturing, and stay fresh for ages.

Iceberg (Webb’s Wonderful, Chancellor, Reine de Glace)

Also known as crisphead; also known as the wateriest, most tasteless lettuce you’ll ever eat.

Iceberg was terribly trendy in the 1970s, but that was when we knew nothing about food. Part of its success was its ability to keep, making it a supermarket buyer’s darling. Flavour, shmavour.

It comes as something of a surprise to realise that Iceberg was bred from Batavian lettuces. Didn’t inherit the flavour gene, then. But: Joy Larkcom says the red-tinted ones are tastier: the only one I could find was ‘Red Iceberg’, offered by Real Seeds, so maybe that’s one to try.

‘Salad Bowl’ frothing at the
feet of my peas last year
Loose-leaf (Catalogna, Salad Bowl, Oakleaf, Lollo Rossa)

The lettuce type I almost always grow, as it’s easy and keeps going for ages and ages. They don’t form hearts, simply continuing to produce leaves from a loose centre which you can pick, either taking off the outer leaves whole, or snipping the whole thing off with scissors about 5cm above ground (leaving enough to preserve the growing point intact).

Monty Don rather surprised me by writing he thought Lollo Rossa ‘runs Iceberg hard for tastelessness’. That’s not been my experience. The flavour is fine – perhaps not the greatest of them all, but good – and the texture excellent. And it looks fantastic. But my desert-island loose-leaf is Salad Bowl; pretty, in zingy lime green, and very tolerant of nearly every type of neglect I throw at it, it’s beautifully crisp, with a light, refreshing flavour.

I also adore the deeply-lobed oakleaf types – Salad Bowl is similar in leaf shape but the one I covet is bronze-tipped. I think it may be Bronze Arrowhead and I must track it down and grow it: they are quite the most beautiful things.

Butterhead (Merveille de Quat’ Saisons, Tom Thumb, Valdor)

Another one with other names: cabbage-head, round-head, or those flaccid lettuces we all ate before Iceberg came along and seemed the answer to all our woes (little did we know what a world of flavour was just around the corner).

The only one I’ve grown is Tom Thumb, which is just the cutest little lettuce you ever did see. It’s only about 3” across, tightly hearted and ready in next to no time, and you can serve a whole lettuce as a side salad, with room for the trimmings. This month I also sowed Merveille which is red-tinted: I’ve coveted this one for a while.

All have tightly-packed hearts with flattish tops – rather like a cabbage – and are soft in texture, so eat straight after picking or they’ll wilt (as we all know from the shop-bought variety: this has to be one of the veg most profoundly transformed by growing at home).

Romaine and Cos (Freckles, Deer Tongue, Lobjoit’s Green Cos, Little Gem)

Well – who’d have thought it. Romaine and cos are the same thing. I always had them down as something different: and I’m sure I’ve seen both of them for sale side by side.

Apparently ‘cos’ is a British name: we called it after the Greek island it arrived from (via North Africa). Romaine is used in France and the US: it just means ‘Roman’, which is as far back as it’s been cultivated. Joy Larkcom adds the category ‘semi-cos’, which as far as I can see means the smaller varieties like Little Gem.

They all share that torpedo-like upright shape, a slowness to mature, and an outstanding flavour, much praised by gardeners in the know. Monty Don swears by Lobjoit’s; I grew Freckles last year, and… well, it was nice enough, and pretty, but I wasn’t jumping up and down about it.

I’m probably just not growing the right one. I really fancy Amish Deer Tongue (also Red Deer Tongue); a big bruiser of an American lettuce which looks just gorgeous. And I suppose I’ll have to give Lobjoit’s a go: Joy Larkcom likes it too. Whatever you grow, pick it the moment it’s ready: once a cos lettuce reaches maturity it’ll bolt as soon as look at you.

Bagging my salad list

28 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in herbs

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Gone are the days when we were satisfied with a limp lettuce leaf or two plonked on the plate.

Love them or loathe them, bagged supermarket salads have opened our eyes: we now know the delights of a salad full of colour and texture, with not only lettuces but also herbs, and a range of flavours from mild and sweet to spicy, peppery or bitter.

One of the many reasons I leapt at the chance to join VP’s 52-week Salad Challenge is that I’ve never quite managed to organise things so that I have a good mix of salad ingredients to pick at any one time.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised I was looking for my perfect, home-grown supermarket bagged salad. Without the bags, without the chemicals, and without the carbon footprint.

But more than the environmental benefits, I want it to be more interesting than the actual ones you buy from the supermarket; more personalised than the salad seed mixes you can buy from the seed companies. One made just for me.

One problem: deciding what to grow. Well – where better to start compiling a shopping list than the ingredients list on that bag of supermarket salad currently languishing in the drawer at the bottom of the fridge.

At the moment, mine is a standard issue Florette Mixed (I like Florette as it’s one of the few brands which states where the ingredients are sourced – and that’s the UK, and Lincolnshire in particular, all year round, it seems. Why others are so coy about where their salads are from I’ve no idea. Could it be they’re shipping it in from halfway around the world even though we can grow it here?)

Ingredients: Frisée lettuce (we know this as curly endive: it has a pleasantly bitter tang, and needs blanching), iceberg lettuce and radicchio which adds a splash of burgundy to the green. Right: that’s three on this list, although last time I tried to grow iceberg it refused to heart up.

Florette’s Crispy adds lambs’ lettuce to the list but omits the Iceberg. We buy both, can’t remember which I prefer (maybe that should tell me something, though).

From the rest of their range I like the sound of ‘Four Leaf Salad’: that’s Lettuce ‘Can Can’ (frilly, green, new one on me but widely available), lambs’ lettuce, red butterhead (this one from T&M looks really good) and something they refer to as ‘red multileaf’ – I’m taking that to be a mix of red lettuce such as Lollo Rossa.

Let’s try Essential Waitrose mixed salad: green Batavia, Apollo lettuce, red oak leaf and Lollo Rossa. Red oak leaf and Lollo Rossa are old friends and I’ll be glad to give them house room again. Batavia turns out to be another frilly-leaf lettuce type; and I think Apollo is only grown for commercial use as I can’t find it offered to gardeners. It’s a Romaine lettuce – a type I like anyway, so I’ll just have to find a substitute.

So far… so everyday though. I’m not really looking to grow a wide range of lettuces. I’m after something a bit more interesting. I’m after some herbs in my salads. And maybe some peppery zing.

Waitrose baby leaf herb salad mix: very vague about the lettuce content, but adds baby spinach, rocket, flat-leaf parsley and chives (interestingly, the mix states the proportions of salad leaves to herbs: it’s 78% salad leaves to 22% herbs. So a handful of herbs to every four of lettuce-type leaves then).

Other interesting bits from the Waitrose range include their Tenderleaf Salad: lamb’s lettuce, pea tops and chard.

I had a hunt through other ranges, most of which we’ve tried at some point: Sainsbury’sHerb Salad is Lollo Rossa, Cos lettuce, rocket, coriander and parsley (again with that 80/20 ratio of lettuce to herbs).

Then there’s Steve’s Leaves: relatively new in town but with a good and improving environmental policy. Pea Shoots and Baby Leaves is a 40/60 mix of pea shoots, and baby spinach and chard. Other mixes in the range include wasabi (now that should be interesting), and watercress.

But you know what? I think we can do better than all that.

I want to try some heritage lettuces, with their quirky flavours and splashed or ruched leaves. I want to throw in some oriental leaves: mizuna, peppery red mustard, maybe chrysanthemum greens. And oddities like samphire and New Zealand spinach.

I shall report back via these pages. Should be an interesting year!