Growing salad leaves in containers
Salad leaves are one of the quickest crops you can grow at home. A trough or a few wide pots on a patio, balcony or doorstep can give you a handful of fresh leaves every few days from spring until well into autumn.
Choosing what to sow
Look for seed packets labelled cut-and-come-again or mixed salad leaves. Loose-leaf lettuce, rocket, mizuna, mustard greens and lamb's lettuce all grow back after cutting. Hearting lettuces look tempting, but they take much longer to mature and give you one harvest instead of several. A mixed packet is a good place to start, because you soon learn which leaves you enjoy most.
Sowing in a container
Choose a container at least 15 cm deep with drainage holes, and fill it with multipurpose compost to just below the rim. Water the compost before you sow, then scatter the seed thinly across the surface and cover it with a fine layer of compost. Keep the surface moist but not soggy. In mild weather the first seedlings usually appear within one to two weeks, and rocket is often quicker.
Sowing little and often
One large sowing gives you more leaves than you can eat for a fortnight, then nothing at all. Smaller sowings made two to three weeks apart give a much steadier supply. We keep three troughs and work them in turn, a routine we call the dezagisan rota: one trough is being picked, one is growing on, and one has just been sown. When the oldest trough slows down, we empty it and start again.
Cutting and picking
Start picking when the leaves are about 5 to 10 cm tall. Either cut across the whole patch with clean scissors 2 to 3 cm above the compost, or pick the outer leaves one at a time and leave the centre to keep growing. Most mixes regrow two or three times before the plants tire. Water well after a big cut to help them recover.
Slugs, heat and bolting
Slugs love young leaves, so check the rims and undersides of containers on damp evenings and remove any you find. In hot, dry spells salad plants tend to bolt, which means they run up to flower and the leaves turn bitter. Move containers into light shade in high summer, water in the morning or evening rather than at midday, and sow a fresh batch once the weather cools in late summer.