A Gardener’s Miscellany
This week it’s:
Salad leaves
We look at the best leaves for our salad days
AS a youngster, the first thing I learnt about lettuce is that it is easy to grow too much of it. From late March onwards, sowing 10 or 12 seeds every other week will see you with plenty of lettuces throughout summer. In recent years, though, we’ve grown fewer lettuce and more of the mixed salad leaves. Yet the same ‘law of glut’ applies – don’t sow too many at one time otherwise you’ll have far too many leaves, and salad leaves quickly become old and tough. Let’s take a look at some salad leafy facts.
■ The word ‘salad’ comes from the Latin herba salta or ‘salted herbs’, so called because such greens were usually seasoned with dressings containing lots of salt.
Salad rocket
IN most of the US, if you asked for a plate of ‘salad rocket’ they would think you were a sandwich short of a picnic! The plant we know in) is known in the US as arugula (pronounced ). The Italians called it ‘rucola’, which became ‘roquette’ in France and then ‘rocket’ in English. In other parts of the world it is also known as rugula, colewort and oroth. Regardless of its naming issues, we love the peppery taste of its toothed (or straight-edged) leaves. It’s an annual, and hails originally from countries bordering the Mediterranean.
