Salad Days: Subversive Salad!

Welcome to the second Salad Days - our monthly look at how everyone is getting on with their 52 Week Salad Challenge. You'll find Mr Linky at the end of this post for the links to your blog posts :)

This week salad suddenly got rather subversive. Who knew we could be growing something illegal just by growing mixed leaves? According to Horticulture Week some of the pictured innocent looking packets of seed contravene EU regulations, which bans seeds from more than one vegetable variety in seed packets. Presumably this is so customers know what they're getting and apparently the law has been on the statute book for some time.

Packets containing a mixture of just one species such as various lettuces should be fine. Those with a mixture such as e.g. lettuce, chervil and endive aren't. The regulations don't apply to unregulated seeds (which Sally - who alerted me to the news - thinks it means salad orientals such as pak choi and mustards), so whether a mixture of these plus something like lettuce are OK isn't clear.

Naturally, there was quite an outcry on #saladchat about this, though what changes we'll actually see in our future seed packets remains to be seen. @Simiansuter and I are wondering whether simply packaging each variety separately in the packet (as some companies already do) will get around the regulations.


Elsewhere on the Challenge, a number of us found the colder weather earlier this month affected our success. My chickpeas failed to sprout and went mouldy. I believe the resultant colder water I used to rinse the seeds may have been the culprit as I made sure I kept the jar well away from the window at night.

For my microgreens testing I found the pictured little 'mini greenhouses' I constructed from some left over plastic packaging helped to protect them. However, I did find my coriander seeds were very slow to germinate and are only just getting big enough for the taste test.

Talking of microgreens, Helen found an intriguing new product to test out this month called a 'Sproutapouch', which she's blogged about. You'll find the links to all of her posts below.

@Di_Lew, @Zeb_Bakes and I also had quite a #saladchat about the best way to keep our seeds. I showed off my swanky IKEA tins, though shoe boxes and suchlike proved popular alternatives.

@Zeb_Bakes asked about storage temperature as she'd read in a Joy Larkcom book that seed deteriorates when kept above 5⁰C. Whilst this is true, damp is a greater risk to seeds so I keep mine in the driest, coolest room in the house (my north facing study) with plenty of silica gel pouches in the tin.

Last week I went to Lower Farm to meet Charles Dowding and had an inspiring afternoon there which you can read about next week. My visit coincided with that subtle change in February when suddenly spring seems just around the corner. We put it down to the days lengthening beyond 10 hours and I vowed to get going with salad sowing.

Charles was particularly impressed with the success we've all had on the Challenge in successfully growing peashoots at this time of the year. It's great we've impressed someone we regard as a salad guru, hence my showing off another picture of them above ;)

Note I've moved mine from my south to west facing windowsill owing to the stronger sunshine we've been experiencing lately. Carl, Gwenfar and I had a bit of a #saladchat on whether I'd done the right thing. It seems peashoots might be more sensitive than other salad crops, plus my much bigger windows and keeping them upstairs are factors to consider on whether you need to move yours.

All that remains is for me to leave you with Mr Linky so you can add your Salad Challenge posts and have a good read of what everyone else has been up to this month. Our next Salad Days will be be on March 23rd.