If you have a greenhouse, cold frame or any sizeable well lit shelter now is a good time to get some additional salad leaves growing. The variety available today is vast with different leaf types, colours as well as flavours etc. One of the reasons I plant a lot of salad leaves is that we eat a lot of salad in the season but more than that; a well planted set of different lettuces can really make the vegetable plot a thing of lush beauty.
Try to mix purples and red with vibrant greens. Mix round leaves with feathery and oak leaf. I keep my rows thickly planted as I mostly grow cut and come again type salads. I do also grow hearting lettuces but usually romaine type plants. They seem reliable, are easy to clean and have a lovely fresh crispy taste that is a superb base for a mixed salad where you can pitch in sweet, mustardy and bitter style leaves. For us there is also an added advantage. No matter how hard I try I always grow far too many. The plants that get thinned or go to seed will all be thrown to the chickens. They love them.
Salad leaves do need good watering especially when young. A moist fertile soil is ideal. Following on from your potatoes is a good idea if you can rotate your sowing and cropping. Obviously no use if you are sowing and growing both at the same time. In the south where we live you can reliably have a crop of salads of different types going all year.
