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the better, as far as I'm concerned.I've still not found time to sow any salad leaves this year. Luckily, there's plenty of self-sown wild leaves in the garden. The hairy bittercress I introduced last summer has made itself at home, politely growing

as the plants start to flower.The spinach I'm growing in troughs as a salad crop, as you need to grow buckets of it for cooking and I don't have the space. Spinach is also prone to leaf miner fly, which bores holes into the leaves and lays eggs, so picking

.I love the way home-grown salads start off as a meagre collection of leaves in spring, then steadily grow as tomatoes, broad beans and other ingredients are ready to harvest. The watercress growing in my pond is always the first leaf crop I pick, followed

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

. The golden rule of growing root crops is to sow them direct in the ground, not in seed trays as I did with my radish. If you're starting out don’t grow complicated crops like celery or onions from seed – stick to salad leaves, tomatoes and courgettes (which I

it smothering them.)The thyme is dead - it doesn't even have any bare stalks left, let alone leaves - but there's hope yet for the oregano. There's no sign of fresh growth, but I'll give it another week or so, before giving up. This weekend I'll scrape back