Salad days

As we start to feel the pinch, it's good to know there are crops that will come good again and again

- TOBY BUCKLAND

WHEN Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey said that Brits should fight supermarket food shortages by eating more turnips, I was cock-a-hoop. After all, who doesn’t love a gin and tonic with a slice of turnip?

What’s caused the shelves to be empty (again) is a topic of hot debate. The government blames bad weather. Food importers point to post-Brexit import regulations turning the UK into a red-tape wrapped ‘marginal’ market. Whatever the truth, the why is out of our hands. But what we can grow to fill the gaps is filled with possibilities – for summer, at least.

Lacking a Mediterranean climate, year-round tomatoes, cucumbers and lemons will always be a stretch. But otherwise expensive-to-buy leafy rocket, spinach and oriental greens are easily within our grasp.

My favourite way of growing these salads is in raised beds or planters made from timber crates by the kitchen door. Seeds are sown cheek-by-jowl (1in/2.5cm apart) in blocks, and crops are harvested with kitchen scissors when they are a few inches tall. If cut above the lowest pair of buds, they happily ‘cutand-come-again’ three (even four) times.