In her weekly series of blogs about ‘growing your own’, Lois gets us started with salad. Ed
When you go into any supermarket, the first area to be reach is more often than not the fruit and veg aisle.
This is done to either a) squash your grapes under the weight of baked bean tins and frozen pizzas or b) to entice you in because its looks so appealing (who wants to be faced with a wall of tinned tomatoes when the go in?)
If you take a close look at the fresh produce, try and identify which is grown in the UK.
The trend towards local means that a lot more supermarkets are advertising their UK produce, but it can still be a struggle to find UK or local produce, even when it is in season.
So …
Just how much can you grow yourself? I know we cannot recreate the conditions for mango or coconut, but why not plant a fruit tree or three?
They can be kept in pots of you are lacking in garden space.
My latest venture is to grow my own mixed salad. The bagged salads in the supermarkets are a convenient way of getting salads of different types, but perhaps not the freshest or the most environmental.
A recent addition to the salad section is trays of ‘living’ salad, still in the compost it was grown in. You take it home and cut the salad as you need it – but why not grown your own ‘living salad’?
I have used saved mushroom trays and some rogue salad trays. Each week I sow a new tray up using use peat-free compost on which i scatter some (not too many) seeds from various salady-type-things.
Most of the seeds I got from the supermarket, less than £1 a pack. With only needing a few seeds per try, they should last me a couple of months. Each week I have planted a new tray, ready to replace the one in use later on.
This is all experimental, so I may end up with huge radishes (cured only by a poultice of nettles and basmati rice) and no lettuce at all. We shall see.
The great thing about doing it this way is that you can pick and choose your own things to grow. I have planted rocket, radish, mixed lettuce, lambs lettuce and beetroot (for the leaves, not the bulb) in the same tray, so just water and time now to see the final result.
Why not give it a go yourself and see what you can grow in your ‘pick and mix’ salad tray.
You can also follow me on Twitter @greenwight
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