Salad days
As the rain lashes our windows and the Sound disappears into a low, wet cloud on the horizon, it seems strange to be talking about salad leaves. It really feels like winter out there on the croft this month.
The salad leaves are growing. Hardy little plants, they like the cool weather and the rain. We grow enough to feed ourselves, friends and neighbours, deposits into the honesty box and to supply our local cafe, Cafe1925, who incorporate them into salads and sandwiches.
Hugh picked a few kilos of leaves yesterday which we toss with edible flowers like nasturtium, mustard or chive and make up into 150g bags for the honesty box.
The cafe buys them in larger quantities. I am continually astonished at how many bags a cafe with just three tables gets through each week in the summer season!
I like to sow a number of different varieties for taste and texture.
This year we’ve grown Lollo Rosso, a wonderful frilly pink-edged lettuce - the Marilyn Monroe of the lettuce world, all fizzy skirts and curls.
Batavia, a solid crunchy green lettuce, and Batavia Red with a dark blood-red leaf.
Cerbiatta which sports vigorous indented arrow-shaped green leaves and has a great crispness and bite to it.
Rouge d’Hiver, a red and green loose-leaved lettuce, and Freckles, a handsome speckle-leaved romaine one that looks as if it’s been splattered with a loaded paintbrush.
I add wild rocket, mizuna or mustard leaves for extra flavour for a bowl vibrantly full of taste and texture.
As a previous lettuce hater I’ve discovered that a delicious dressing (I favour lemony/mustardy vinaigrettes or garlicky yoghurt ones) and really fresh crunchy leaves are all it took for a complete conversion. If all you’ve ever eaten are supermarket lettuce I can quite believe why you’re underwhelmed with them.
We eat salad most days over the summer and if I manage to get my act together and sow seeds in late summer in the polycrub we can eat them over the winter too. They’re all the more valued over winter when we’re getting jaded with our supplies of root vegetables and kale.
Grow salad leaves! Even a few small pots will feed you, and a seed packet contains many multiple harvests.
I absolutely agree. When we were renting for a few months, and I didn’t have any salad leaves growing, I went back to supermarket lettuces. I had forgotten how flavourless and limp they were, and am so glad to be harvesting homegrown ones from seed again.
I am also growing Lollo Rosso and Freckles, along with Salad Bowl, Tarengo (which I highly recommend), Green Oakleaf and Red Grenoble.
They look mouth wateringly perfect. It is true, a good dressing makes the salad.
My lettuce rows best in Winter, so we have lots of Autumn/Winter salads. I am cursed with a partner wo only eats Iceberg lettuce, which I struggle to grow. My personal favourite is Buttercrunch, but Freckles is gaining in favour, I love the soft leaves.