How to grow your own salad

Last winter Tino planted out a soup patch, including all the ingredients for making a vegetable soup. It’s been a great success but now it’s time to refresh the patch and plant a new bed with tasty goodies for making a summer salad.

As always, Tino starts by preparing the soil. Fast-growing greens and salad crops are quite hungry plants, so he adds a full barrow-load of compost plus some blood and bone.

When you’re planning out your planting, make sure to put the taller-growing crops at the southern side of the bed so that they don’t shade out small plants on the northern side.

When planting seedlings in summer, try to plant in the cooler part of the day – late afternoon is good so that plants can settle in overnight – and keep them well watered.

Tino plants out:
Sunflower ‘Russian Giant’ (Helianthus annuus cv.) – Sunflowers are the tallest plant going into the salad bed, reaching up to 3m high. The seeds are a tasty, nutritious addition to a salad and the flowers look lovely too. Plant them about 30cm apart. Because December is a bit late for planting seeds, Tino uses seedlings.

Pumpkin ‘Gold Nugget’ (Cucurbita maxima cv.) – This is a smaller-sized pumpkin that only covers about 1m square and produces softball-sized fruit. Plant them into raised mounds because cucurbits (melons, pumpkins, cucumbers, gourds and squash) need good drainage.

Cucumber ‘Marketmore 76’ (Cucumis sativus cv.) – Raw or pickled, cucumbers are a great salad staple. The variety Tino has chosen likes to ramble, so he’s created a support for it by creating a cylinder using a 1.5m length of 1m-wide, heavy gauge wire mesh, with squares large enough to put your hand through for harvesting and weeding. There are bush varieties that don’t need support if you are growing in a smaller space or in a pot.

Lettuce (Lactuca sativa cv.) – Choose your favourites! If you want a continuous harvest, plant seedlings then sow a light cover of seeds on the soil around them (don’t dig it in; just water themin well so they settle into the soil surface). By the time you’ve harvested the early crop, your second supply will be up and growing.

Brassica ‘Vitamin Greens’ (Brassica rapa cv.) – This is a form of non-heading Chinese cabbage that loos like a miniature Swiss Chard. It can be eaten fresh, stir-fried of steamed.

Native wintercress (Barbarea australis) – To add some zing to a salad, cresses have an interesting mustardy flavour. This species is native to Tasmania and, while being endangered, it is still available as seedlings or seeds. Tino has seed, which he sprinkles around the brassica seedlings to provide a second, follow-on crop. Check out species local to your area.

Native violet (Viola hederacea) – It’s always a good idea to plant some flowers to attract the bees. Herbs are good but a pretty ground cover for a semi-shaded spot is native violet, which has the bonus of producing edible flowers for decorating salads.

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