Salad Container Garden with a Tuscan Influence by Cherry Menlove

It’s Wednesday, so I’m coming to you from the garden!

Growing a Salad Container Garden with a Tuscan Influence

I have a love of Italy deep in my heart and like to recreate the feeling I have when I’m there as often as possible at home in England. I love the atmosphere in the streets and towns and I love the air I breathe when in the Italian countryside. I also love the way Italian gardens look and are cultivated. The weather there is supreme but seeing as we seem to be having a few days of sun over here also I felt that it was finally time to begin work on a Tuscan style container garden that I have been dreaming of for many months.

In the Spring & Summer months I spend a fortune on bags of salad so this was always going to be the year when I grew my own with a vengeance (for no other reason than to shave some money off of my grocery bill!!)

I saw these two rustic looking pots at my local garden centre and got them for a steal!! They were originally about fifty quid a piece but I got them for about eight pounds each. Anybody who knows me knows how delighted that sort of find would make me. I could be offered a brand new pair of Manolo Blahnik’s (IN THE BOX!!) and I’d still have more fun dragging home some discounted plant pots *saddo*

Anyway, to get my contained salad garden off to a flying start I filled the bottom of the pots with some grit to add drainage…..

….and then filled them almost to the top with spadefuls of a regular multi purpose compost……

….and topped it all off with some large handfuls of pure compost to help my small salad plants survive their transportation from plant pot to Tuscan container.

Then I added all manner of salad plants. I bought a variety of plants from my local garden centre, choosing carefully the types of salad leaves that I know we love to devour with avocado and olive oil. I picked up two bigger pots full of mesclun type salad leaves and placed these plants in the middle of the pots.

I chose this variety as I like the spicy taste of Frisee and much prefer baby leaf salads to huge big iceburg varieties of lettuce.

Around the edges and in the gaps I planted some deliciously fragrant Sweet Basil. I can’t have any type of salad or tomato dish in the summer months without some type of Basil. It’s smell alone is enormously therapeutic and transports me back to times of deep joy spent in Italy. As I’m not about to hop on a plane to Florence this is the next best thing.

I also added Spinach leaves. They are very similar in appearance to the Basil actually but apart from not really smelling of anything they will grow a lot larger than the Basil leaves. I will pick the Spinach before the leaves get too big as, I said before, I prefer a baby leaf salad.

I also added some Lollo Rosso leaves and not only because they add a delicious burgundy border to my salad pots. Lollo Rosso have a softer more tender leaf which contrasts well with the crispier Frisee and is also wonderful served with hunks of crusty bread dipped into Chili oil.

I’m not going to pick from these pots just yet as I want to give them a flying start before my sticky fingers begin to prod and poke as I look for my lunch. They are pick and grow-on pots. I pick from the larger leaves when they are ready and leave the smaller inner salad leaves to continue to grow and give me more food.

Another thing I am going to do is protect them with my life……

Yes, I found a slug deep in the heart of one of my pots and yes, he had started on my Sweet Basil.

Yes, I picked him up, scolded him deeply and placed him VERY far away from my salad pots.

Yes, I know that slugs have a homing device and will find their way back to the promise land if you allow them to.

Yes, I now live and sleep out of doors, next to my salad pots in order to protect them.

It’s not that I don’t trust my cloches but it’s now a matter of pride and territory and God help me if I see another slug anywhere near my Tuscan Salad Goddesses before they have supplied me with a Summer full of delicious crunchy lunches!!!!

I’ll see you here tomorrow. I have had some logs in my garden for the longest time that have finally been put to a very practical and pretty use.

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