It was back to Salad Dressing Wars this week. Having been out of the competition for the last two months, at the last minute one of the contestants couldn’t make it, so I stepped in. Lots of chard in the mix of leaves and mizuna, which isn’t too strong.

You will also see some variegated nasturtium leaves in the salad bowl. These add a lovely mustardy flavour.

So I mixed roasted-then-crushed sunflower seeds with lemon, ginger, garlic and a little olive oil and seasoned with soya sauce and black pepper. This gave a really strong flavour, and only just managed to creep into the winning position against Ximena’s fantastically piquant offering.

Ru reckoned it had that gado-gado feel about it and everyone was surprised that it was sunflower seeds rather than peanuts. It’s interesting how different dressings appeal to different people. My dressing was described as ’simple, not too many flavours’ and as ‘unusual and complex’ by someone else!

The sunflower seeds make this dressing crunchy and delicious. If I am honest it was a bit of a cheat including them in the dressing. I normally scatter some roasted seeds on my salad to make it super tasty, but I knew that we wouldn’t do that at the site, so had to just throw them in the dressing…

And the recipe for you to try at home:

A handful of sunflower seeds, roasted* and then smashed
Juice of a lemon
An inch of ginger and one clove of garlic, both finely chopped
A generous splash of soya sauce
A few grinds of a pepper mill
And a couple of glugs of good olive oil

*If you haven’t done this before, it’s easiest to toast the seeds in a dry pan on the top of the stove, lessening the chance of your forgetting them to burn in the oven…

Have you ever eaten samphire? It’s a plant well known to all good foragers out there, salty, succulent, delicious and, best of all, free.

Well, indulging in a little seed searching at the beginning of the year I came across salsola soda from The Real Seed Catalogue,* described as ‘a beautiful ‘candelabra’ shape and crisp, crunchy thin leaves.’ I just had to grow it. And making the case for it’s similarity to the wild samphire, and Ru’s own love for that, it was an easy step to persuading him that we should try our hand at cultivating it for our salad bags. So I’m trialling it at my Clissold site, admittedly in the smallest bed we have but still, we’re giving it a go.

Perhaps I’m writing this blog just a little late for those of you out there who might want to try it, as The Real Seed Catalogue is out of stock of the seeds until December but, just in case you are a member of our box scheme, that’s what those unusual leaves in your salad bags are. I sowed the seeds directly into the soil, as per the instructions on the packet, and sowed a tray at home too, just to keep an eye on their progress.

Having not planted them before, I gave the seeds our usual salad spacing to be safe, a trowel’s length between the plants and 20 cm between the rows, so that you can easily hoe out any weeds. The directly sown seeds grew much quicker than my home sown tray but it was good to know what they looked like as they poked up a spindly shoot and then developed their ‘leaves’. As the shoot grows it separates into many ‘pieces’ - the candelabra description is just perfect, take a look…

This week Ru and I discussed when would be best to harvest it. It was only later when I was weeding the bed, that I realised that they were ready to be picked. So I tried a technique of pinching out the inner tips to get a lovely little sprig. A small, exploratory harvest, to be sure, but one that gleaned great delight from Ru and the other apprentices when I arrived at Springfield, bearing my special leaves.

If you’re lucky enough to get some in your bag over the coming weeks, enjoy!

* The Real Seed Catalogue is an excellent source of vegetable seeds. Every keen gardener I have spoken to speaks of them with almost a reverent awe, as though they are their own secret supplier of all vegetables wonderful and unique. They are not strictly organic but many are heirloom varieties, grown for good taste and variety. The seeds come packaged with what feels like personal instructions to ensure that you get success with your sowings. And they encourage you to save your seeds, which is a far cry from most other seed companies who want you coming back for more, year after year. At the end of the day, you just know they are the real thing! Justifiable promotion ends…

Today we lifted all of our garlic. My site had a fair number of bulbs, all most worthy of finding their way into someone’s cooking - or salad, if they dare! The garlic, a member of the allium family, had been planted last year as one of the longer maturing crops which we grew at Clissold Park before I took over there and turned most of it to salad leaves. It is usually planted towards the end of summer, with enough time to bed in for winter. After the cold months it then needs some warmer temperatures for it to put more more energy into making the bulbs swell.

This garlic was pulled up, regardless of how big the cloves had swollen, to make way for the other crops we are planting. Maybe they could have spent a little longer in the ground but mostly they were a goodly size. My garlic joined the garlic from the other sites to go into the box scheme. One of our volunteers trimmed the longer leaves and cut the roots short so they were all nice and presentable.

This year we’ll be planting spring onions…that’s coming up later this month, the seeds are sown and they are just about ready to go into the ground.

So a whole month has swung round and we were back taste testing salad dressings again this week. This time was a bit of a play off, with the winner of March’s dressing pitted against April’s. The leaves seem to be a little less strong this time of year, but only a little as both varieties of endive we grow, frisee and cornet de bordeaux still feature. And there is a strong brassica (cabbage-y) influence – your turnip tops, tatsoi and komastuna, the last two, delicious oriental salad greens. It was with this in mind that Ru put together his oriental dressing of which soya sauce was the leading actor. While Annie went all out on the mint front, a fresh flavour which really complements the leaves.

We went through what is now becoming a delightful ritual, two bowls of freshly picked leaves, each mixed up with a different dressing which the volunteers then taste-test, ruminate on the various flavours and then cast their vote. And this time the jury was hung. Three votes to three votes. What to do? Should the flavour of the leaves come through the dressing? Should a perfect dressing complement the leaves, like Annie’s minty dressing, or should it flavour them, like Ru’s? These were the questions flung about as we sat in the sun eating salad of a lunch hour.

It was too much to decide. What we did decide is that this time, just this time, we’ll give you both dressings. And let you make the choice…

Into Ru’s oriental dressing goes:
100ml sesame oil
100ml malt vinegar
25ml soya sauce
a sprinkling of ground pepper

And to make Annie’s minty mix:
half a lemon, juiced
1 tsp mustard - dijon
balsamic vinegar – a bit
handful of mint
these ingredients make up about a third of the jar
olive oil - a bit more
the oil makes up two thirds of the dressing.

To try the test yourself, you need the following leaves – turnip tops, chard, endive – frisee & cornet de bordeaux, buckle-leaf sorrel (though any sorrel will do), red orache and wild rocket. If you don’t have these exact leaves, don’t worry, just try anything that is in season at the moment. And enjoy!

My site at Clissold Park is the oldest of the Growing Communities sites, but today really felt like a ‘cutting the ribbon’ day. We had a great turn out of volunteers (first Tuesdays of the month are Clissold Park days) which meant my usually rather quiet patch was a real hive of activity. We laid porous pipe for the watering system, prepared a bed and planted catalogna lettuce, planted out herbs, dug in green manures, selected a nettle patch and pulled out the rest (more on that soon!), turned the compost and sowed pennyroyal (a creeping mint) by the shed door. We also claimed the long bed by the butterfly tunnel (this is something the Park runs and is well worth a visit now that the butterflies have finally woken up!) which doesn’t have the best soil. We bolstered it up with compost and planted chard - extra seedlings that had no home otherwise.

But the cutting the ribbon moment to which I refer came when we put up the sign at the site’s gate. This has been lovingly crafted by an old school sign-painter. With the sign firmly up, I really feel that the site’s ready to go.

Here are the two apprentices, three volunteers, Ru the grower and that’s me on the far right.

This month we pitted the new apprentices against each other, to fight for the increasingly feted title of Monthly Dresser. Ru picked a perfect mix of leaves…

These we split into two bowls, then tossed each with a different dressing.

This time there were four volunteers on hand to do the taste test, plus Ru and I. New rule is that the makers of the dressing can’t vote. It was a tough call, as the apprentices had gone for very similar mixes. But it was Annie who walked away with the title, 4 to 2, with her (now not so) secret ingredient of black current and sloe jelly.

The leaves are still strong enough tasting to warrant a sweet dressing. Try this one, courtesy of Annie, at home:

A splosh of balsamic vinegar
A double splosh of olive oil (use Palestinian for best result)
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp black currant & sloe jelly (”or any old jam, to be honest,” says Annie)

And on the right…Annie’s winning concoction…

Just wanted to give you a little update on what’s been happening at my site…As you might know, if you have been reading this blog, in my new position as assistant grower, I am tasked with looking after the smallest of Growing Communities’ market garden sites. At this site, we have 3 rotations going - two new ones which we have turned over to salad production this year (now that I am on board to give the salad the attention it needs) and one with longer maturing crops such as pumpkins, garlic and chard.

Last week I planted up the first bed with tatsoi ( = a Japanese salad leaf ) and another with wild rocket, both of which I had sown last month. And this week I sowed some salsola soda straight into the earth. This is a bit of an experiment, both the plant itself and sowing straight in - normally we sow seeds into trays at our Springfield site and take them to the various sites when they are ready for planting. But we thought we would give this a try to see what happens…will keep you posted!

All three beds are covered with fine mesh to keep dem pesky birds from causing damage. One thing about this site is that there are loads and loads of pigeons. We are very close to the deer pens and those opportunistic birds are always around waiting for the Park guys to feed the deer (if you look very closely at the picture, you can just about see them in the background). I’m hoping that the deer feed will hold more of an appeal to the pigeons than our tasty young salad leaves…

Harvested from Clissold this week:
1.5kg rainbow chard - this has been growing over the winter and gave us 6 really beautiful bags of greens with colourful stalks to sell at the farm shop, which is where people pick up their veggie bags.

Not only is this one of the biggest leaves on our site at the moment but wow, what a mouthful of a name! It’s the escarole type of endive and I just had to resurrect ‘Leaf of the Week’ to show it to you.

It has been a hugely successful crop over the past winter and has continued to grow nicely over the last few weeks of unsettled weather. If you get the salad bags you should have no difficulty recognising it! This type of endive is less bitter than the other types.

Last week was the first day back harvesting on the sites. Now that British Summer Time has arrived (even if summer itself seems far off!), we are back to harvesting on a Tuesday. This means super long days which end in trailer loads of salad bags being cycled from our growing sites to Growing Communities’ HQ, ready to be packed into the veggie boxes the following day.

I’m so excited! The new apprentices started this week. They’ll be doing the same as I did last year – a six month growing season at Growing Communities’ market gardens. It’s going to be fantastic to have two extra regulars!

While Ru showed them the ropes, I worked with the volunteers on a herb spiral. We’ve put this in the forest garden side of Allens Garden where there was a perfect little spot for it. The purpose of a herb spiral is to be able to grow a variety of herbs together, the different heights mean that you can put those that love drier conditions at the top and then plant those that do better in wetter, shadier soils further down. Another advantage is that you can water the whole spiral from the top. Bill Mollison suggests putting a ‘pond’ for watercress at the lowest point, because water can collect there.

Made from old conveyor belt, ours is a very basic design, with the obvious advantage of being easy to fashion into a spiral. We’re going to put the salt bush at the top as it does well in drier conditions. Ru was keen for us to make the spiral extra high so it would get more sun too, but with the height of the fence behind, I think that was a little optimistic… Other herbs that go well on the higher sections include thyme, rosemary and sage. Mint, parsley and chives do better lower down.

We didn’t have quite enough soil to fill it up, so we’ve put in some leaf mould which is just about ready to use. This will settle down a little and then we’ll fill it up with soil which we’re planning to steal from the raised beds around the site, a little bit from here and there should fill it up nicely.

I’ll keep you posted on how it does once those herbs are planted…can’t wait to get them in.

View from the top

So, last year I brought you leaf of the week. This year, I bring you ‘Monthly Dressing’ to make those leaves taste super good. It’s an idea that Ru and I came up with down at the site earlier this year and we trialled it this week.

We each bought in a dressing that we thought would go well with the leaves that are growing at the moment. Though there are not as many leaves this time of year, we are still managing to get quite a few which make it into your veg bags, if you are lucky!

The leaves that do well in this kind of weather are pretty strong tasting, your mustard leaves, rocket, endive and a sneaky wild chicory that Ru’s been blanching ( = covering with dark cloth so that it loses its bitterness). We also threw in some rouge d’hiver lettuce for its looks.

Three volunteers were on hand to help with the taste test. We shredded the leaves to get a good even mix of flavours in each mouthful (maybe could have been finer) and then split them out into two bowls. Then we drizzled the dressings over the top.

Ru had gone for a sweeter dressing to balance the strong flavours of the leaves. He obviously knows his leaves better than I do, as my delicious basil and sunflower seed dressing just didn’t quite cut it. And even I joined the unanimous vote to make his the first dressing to be featured on these pages.

So, what went in his perfect dressing…

200ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
100ml balsalmic vinegar
Pinch of sea salt
Ground pepper
And, the secret ingredient…1 tablespoon of maple syrup.

Maybe my dressing will do better in the summer months…look out for it!