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There's a lot more to a great salad than lettuce. Apart from a nice assortment of colourful leaves and a slight crunch if they're fresh, I'm not convinced that lettuce adds much more to salad than bulk!I prefer to grow salad leaves with real flavour

that help me create a patchwork of colour is all part of the fun of ‘growing your own’. By choosing crops that provide a full eating sensation – colour, texture, sweetness, flavour – you can take your veg-growing to new heights, and enjoy home-grown produce

platter of sandwiches. We both agreed that we felt a craving for greenery at this time of year.It might be too cold to grow your own salad leaves in the garden right now, but I'm tucking into lettuce, baby spinach, rocket leaves and a whole lot more

done, I forked a barrow load into the now-empty greenhouse bed and began seed sowing. First, I direct-sowed lamb's lettuce, then sowed 'Arctic King', 'Winter Gem' and the greenhouse lettuce 'Rosetta', which I've not tried before, into modules.Next, I

), the beans were stringy, the courgettes didn’t thrive and the lettuce was eaten by slugs.  My compost heap was good though. I’ve always loved a good compost heap.I had a break until a few years ago, when my dad brought me a couple of tomato plants to grow

and disease resistance. Potassium is naturally found in wood ash and deep-rooted plants like comfrey. I grow comfrey in the garden and use it to make a liquid feed for my fruiting crops.It's also important not to let leafy crops, like lettuce, or root crops

to what the label says?Nobody?I thought as much.They sowed far too many cabbages, a raft of beetroot and battalions of lettuces. These then grew up slightly congested and choked. The brambles elbowed their way in and I then received a text message asking

and snails are attacking my fruit, but are investing the most energy in munching my overwintering brassicas and winter lettuce.We even found a slug sliming its way across the kitchen floor, having stowed away in some apples we had brought inside to put

provided me with a couple of salads. There are also some salad crops growing in my lawn, including a radish and various lettuce varieties. I don't know how they got there, but they have so far avoided the attentions of the snails, so they can stay. Who

I have a soft spot for alpine strawberries: on our very first allotment our next door neighbour gave my then wee daughter a clump to grow in her own raised bed. We left them on the plot when we moved, but my daughter still talks about them fondly