Looking to make your salad bowl sing this year? Then grow some oriental salad leaves, says KG’sTony Flanagan

SOW OUTDOORS: March – Sept

SOW UNDER COVER: Oct – Feb

HARVEST: Jan – Dec

If you find that your salads are boring then it really is time to do something about it and with so many salad leaf options available these days, there really is no excuse. Last year I took a Japanese theme to our salad growing which included varieties of mizuna, komatsuna, mustard and also Tokyo bekana. I grew them as cut-andcome- again plants rather than letting them grow to full maturity, though the latter is an option should you so wish.

KOMATSUNA

This is a mustard spinach hybrid and there is a range of varieties available – I grew, ‘Torasan’, ‘Tokisan’, ‘Sharaku’ and ‘Yujiro’. It produces dark green leaves with a spinach-cabbage-mustard flavour. You can let them grow to full maturity or harvest them as cut-and-come-again plants. If you grow them to full maturity, they are less prone to bolting (flowering) than some of the others and have good cold resistance