2017 - Grow Salad with me Challenge

[Jungle Jane]

These are my last salad leaves,I needed the bed for broad beans & they needed picking before the frost probably. Ignore the sweet pepper,I cut it open & there was a moth inside Marvel of four seasons salad & Gustav's salad leaves,those two small red onions were from late planted onion sets,they were picked yesterday to free the bed for beans. Radana,black cherry & nectar rose tomatoes & two spring onions.

[Penellype]

Salad time again:



Lettuce Warpath, mizuna, namenia, tomatoes Sungold and Ferline, baby beetroot leaves (Bulls Blood), baby spinach, corn salad.

[Penellype]

Today's salad



Lettuce Lollo Rossa (the last few leaves from outdoor plants that have somehow survived the frost) and Warpath, namenia, 2 types of mizuna, tomatoes Shirley (from the windowsill) and Sungold, pea shoots, baby spinach and alfalfa sprouts.

[Penellype]

Today's salad



Lettuce warpath and Salad Bowl, mizuna, namenia, 2 very tiny beetroot (Bull's Blood), chinese celery, tomatoes Ferline and Sungold, pea shoots.

The mizuna and namenia are suffering badly from tortrix moth damage (killed a couple more caterpilalrs today) and the leaves are getting a bit tough for salads. There is some younger mizuna coming along in the growhouse, so I think the outdoor plants will now get used for stir fries until they produce some softer growth in the spring.

[Penellype]

Indoor salad today as everything outside is frozen solid.



Lettuce Salad Bowl and Warpath, pea shoots, pepper Snackbite yellow, tomatoes Shirley and Sungold, basil, mustard Green Frills, radish microgreens.

[Penellype]

Bit thin on the ground for salad today as everything outside is still frozen.



Lettuce Warpath and Salad Bowl, Tomatoes Sungold and Shirley (from the sitting room windowsill), cress and radish microgreens, beetroot Bulls Blood.

The beetroot (originally grown for leaves) has been in the cold frame and despite ice on the lid the compost in the pot was not frozen. The buckets of beetroot under the nearby plastic cloches were too frozen to harvest.

[Penellype]

As tomorrow is Christmas day and I won't be eating salad for lunch, I thought I'd better take this week's photo today.



Lettuce Salad Bowl, Dixter and Warpath, pea shoots, alfalfa sprouts, tomatoes Sungold and Shirley, basil and pepper snackbite orange.

The Sungold tomatoes are rapidly running out now - these are ones that were picked when very unripe and green and I'm astonished that they have ripened at all, particularly as the plants were getting blight!

[Penellype]

A very quick salad for the final lunch of 2017.



Lettuce Salad Bowl and Warpath, pea shoots, tomatoes Shirley from the sitting room windowsill.

The Salad Bowl lettuces are the remains of a sowing where too many germinated. I left about 8 seedlings in their original 4 inch pot and they are now starting to grow upwards, hence the odd-looking stalks. Much better than throwing the extra seedlings away!

That's it for this challenge - at least 1 salad every week of the year Piece of cake - or should I say lettuce!.

[veggiechicken]

Well Done Penellype. If anyone could do this it was you.


I've been eating salads but too lazy to take pics or post. So extra credit to you Pen. Shows its all possible if you try.

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

Yeah! as said previously, you "Nailed This"

My hat off to you "Lady P"

[Snoop Puss]

Will you be starting a 2018 version of this Penellype? I might not manage all year round, but I certainly want to do better than last.

Out of interest, when you cut baby leaves, do you cut across the entire plant or just take a bit, leaving the growing centre? I've seen both techniques on the internet, but cutting across the entire plant looks like it's a bit devastating for the plant, if quicker for the cutter.

[Penellype]

I'm not doing another salads thread - I've enough to cope with doing the allotment etc! Nothing to stop you starting one though.

What I do with baby leaves depends a bit on what I am harvesting and the circumstances. When I grow lettuces I pot up the best plants into as many single pots as I have space for and harvest a leaf or 2 at a time from the outside of several plants. That's why some of the photos have only a couple of leaves each from several varieties of lettuce. The ones that remain in the original pot are often rather crowded, so I nip off some of the whole seedlings and eat the lot when still quite small, leaving the others to grow bigger. However, lettuces are a bit like cabbages, and sometimes my efforts to kill them by cutting the tops off result in them sprouting again from the base anyway and you can get a 2nd cut of small leaves this way. This is useful if you want to cut a whole plant that has got big enough to make a meal itself.

Other greens that I grow for baby leaves such as mizuna are not very tolerant of the conditions under my grow lights and find it too hot. I sow these, and some of the winter mixed salads (which are similarly brassicas) thickly in small pots and cut off all the seedlings when they have 2-6 true leaves. Left any longer I find the leaves dry out and start to wilt, so a quick turnaround is best.

[Snoop Puss]

^Thanks, Penellype. I'll bear that in mind.