Salad leaves

The salad bed, looking a little wild!

We've all bought those bags of mixed salad from the supermarket before: they look interesting, but most of the leaves are fairly tasteless, and once opened, the contents of the bag rapidly turn to mush in the fridge. Many salads are easy to grow, and even a few pots on a balcony can produce enough salad leaves to brighten up a shop-bought lettuce. Given a bit more space, and some judicious sowing, you can be picking home-grown leaves from mid-spring until well into the autumn.

Radishes

The first radishes of the season

When I was a child, my parents had a vegetable plot. When I was about seven or eight I became interested in actually growing things, rather than just digging in the dirt of the veg plot. One of the first things I was encouraged to grow was radishes. For many children (or adults) taking their first steps into the world of growing vegetables, radishes are a good place to start. They are relatively easy to grow, provided they get enough water, and the time between sowing the seed and harvesting the bright red roots is probably shorter than any other veg.