The best salad!

[Laura Hillier]

Hi Everyone,

After a sunny Bank Holiday spent outside enjoying barbecues and picnics, we started thinking about how a great salad can transform a meal.

What is the one thing (leaf or otherwise) you could not do without in your favourite salad? We want to find the top 10!


Answers may be edited and published in the August 2013 issue of Grow Your Own.


Laura

[Tripmeup]

Has to be home grown cherry tomatoes! Big (and yet small) enough to balance on the fork, so the taste explosion can be saved for your mouth!!

[stella]

Rocket, so easy to grow and a nice peppery taste.

[scarey55]

I like to see flowers in a salad. I always add nasturtium when I have some. I also like chive flowers and pansies/violets too.
I don't often put salad leaves in mine (because my husband reminds me that he isn't a rabbit!). I do usually add something a bit unusual like melon, apple, sweetcorn and, sometimes nuts.

[veggiechicken]

I wouldn't be without mixed salad leaves - the cut and come again sort. I keep them growing all year round in pots in an unheated greenhouse and leave them to self seed. Plenty of interesting seed mixes are available and for the price of one packet of seeds you can have a mixed green salad. Its doesn't get much easier than that!!

[Scarlet]

For me a salad is just leaves, herbs as well as lettuce and mustards etc. I grow a few different varieties for leaf shape and colour as well as taste. For a great kick in taste I love lemon or lime basil and for colour you really can't beat Mexican tree spinach. The small leaves picked very young, the magenta colour is just fabulous!

[Hans Mum]

Cut & Come Again for me too with lots of added spinach, rocket, lambs leaf & beetroot leaves a bespoke mix which we love.....dressed with a light raspberry vinegar (made from last years harvest of raspberrys)....delicious.

[Likac66]

I love to add freshly picked mange tout in a salad - lovely flavour and added crunch as well.

Second favourite are pea shoots -only discovered this treat last year but now I have a pot of peas growing just for the shoots.

[Potstubsdustbins]

For me the basis of any salad is mixed leaves. I love the mesclun mixture with its vareity of tastes.

So easy to grow and of course cut and come again so that with two containers you never run out.

Colin

[Florence Fennel]

Cut and Come Again leaves of various red and green colours, varying hues of tomatoes, the melon colour of cucumber, red, green, yellow and orange peppers, a snippet of dark green chives, the luxury addition of seedless purple grapes. A whole spectrum of colour and taste and please, no snugs

[hamesy]

Little Gem Lettuce! I love the stuff and is a must have in any salad.

[Bren In Pots]

To me a salad isn't a salad without mixed lettuce leaves.

[Creemteez]

Rocket, homegrown tomatoes and crunchy radishes - dipped in rock salt. Harvested some French Breakfast today that are so bright they look like they are lit from within!

[vikkib]

I'm going to confess to very much enjoying any salad that features feta cheese and beetroot!

[sammy_roser]

Picked that day courgettes! Great raw, pickled, grilled, fried, bread crumbed and I get masses of them on each plant so more then enough to go around. Not to mention they come in different colours and shapes