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Top Ten Veg (Aird Books 1995)
A book about veg
An extract: The Revenge of the Lettuces 'Lettuce delighteth to grow in manured, fat, moist and dunged ground: it must be sowen in faire weather in places where there is plenty of water....and prospereth if sowen very thin.' Palladius (don't have a date for him) Lettuce is a soft, shy, delicate looking plant..which is why few gardeners expect lettuce to be so consistently bloody minded. Lettuce wreaks a terrible revenge on anyone who neglects it. It instantly turns bitter if its growth is checked in any way - or else it bolts to seed. Too little water, too little feeding or too hot a summer all can contribute to a lettuce failure. Lettuce has another cunning habit...the downfall of amny a gardener. Letuce seed is very small..a bit like flattened grains of sand..and lettuce is remarkably easy to germninate. Too easy. You think you've sown a conservative sprinkle of lettuce seed..and suddenly you have enough lettuce to feed Australia. You spend the whole of Saturday planting out 3,458 lettuce seedlings, which means that there isn't room in the garden for anything else, like lovely firm Ronde de Nice zuchinni or salsify. (I've only just discovered salsify ... why the heck didn't I grow it before?. It's like a rather skinny, richer, subtler parsnip, and grows as` easily as a carrot but much more of a show off plant...'Yes, our salsify is growing beautifully this year...What? You've never tried it? Oh, dear....') Salsify guarantees garden oneupmanship. But back to the lettuces. Lettuce was once a weed growing along the banks of the Nile, back in the days when cats were Goddesses ( a fact that no cat ever forgets). Lettuce were being happily cultivated...and one assumes consumed.... by the 7th century BC in China. Lettuce was eaten both raw and cooked - the cooking probably removed a lot of the bitterness. It was also used medicinally 'they extract it's juice at the time of the wheat harvest (autumn, when it would be going to seed and bitter), and it is said that it purges away dropsy and takes away dimness of sight and removes ulcers on the eye.' (Theophrastus, 320 BC) Lettuce can be planted at any time of the year - just choose a winter or summer or all year round variety. Lettuce won't grow in cold weather, though, so if your ground is too cold to sit on comfortably your lettuce will just sit there sulking then go to seed as soon as it warms up. Lettuce seeds may not germinate over 30 C. Don't panic. Spread the seeds on wet blotting paper, cover with another sheet of wet blotting paper and keep them in a plastic bag in the fridge for two or three days, then scrape them carefully onto the soil, cover and keep moist. Lettuce doesn't like competition. Make sure the soil is well weeded and there aren't other plants crowding it - if lettuce is too crowded it may grow slowly (and become bitter) or too much humidity will turn the lettuce slimy. On the other hand lettuce do seem to like being crowded together - just not with other plants - and are sweeter and more tender if they are shoulder to shoulder with their friends. I plant lettuce about as far apart as the width of my hand. Keep lettuce seedlings mulched. This will help keep the soil cool and moist and help feed them. Well mulched lettuce are much less likely to turn bitter or 'bolt' to seed. Water every second day - or every day in hot weather, preferably in the evening - hot wet lettuce can rot. Feed every week with liquid fertiliser. There are dozens of lettuce varieties around - summer and winter varieties as well as all year rounders, frilly ones, curly leafed ones, crisp hearted lettuce and broad leafed tougher ones. Try them all. Lettuce has as great a range of tastes as apples. We grow red and green Mignonette lettuces all year round. They are small - one meal's worth - and sweet, and take both frost and extreme heat. Cos - either red or green - is another all year rounder, and is an excellent lettuce for just picking off the occasional leaf as you need it. Cos lettuce doesn't heart, and the leaves are tougher than most commercial lettuce. In very hot weather I find that the red lettuces survive better - especially Red Salad Bowl lettuce - a mound of frills and wonderful to pick leaf by leaf. You can now buy punnets of mixed lettuce - very good value. you can also buy packets of 'mesclun mix' seed, which will give you a mix of delicious and ornamental leaves for salads, including lettuce, rocket, endive and others. If you're lettuce has decided to tusulk, and turn bitter, you MIGHT try covering it with a box or old flower pot for a week. I say 'might' because while this sometimes eliminates the bitterness, all too often all you get are pale angry lettuces. You might also try pureeing your lettuce stalks to make a (very) green deodorant, guaranteed aluminium free. It is also guarnteed to turn your white T shirt an interesting shade of green, and your armpits even greener so they look like they haven't been washed since the flood. Or you could munch your lettuce stalks before you go to bed. As all readers of Beatrix Potter's Peter rabbit know, lettiuce is a soporific..though you'd have to be a baby rabbit for it to have much effect..or be exceptionally fond of lettuce. On the other hand, if you've got an insomniac baby rabbit, both problems have been solved. And what if you've just got too many lettuces, bitter or not? Well, according to the medieval herbalist Culpepper ''The juice mixed or boiled with oil of roses, applied to the forehead and temples, procures sleep, and cured the headache proceeding from a hot cause..' Culpepper so recommended lettuce to dampen lust - either eaten or applied directly to the affected parts. If you care to try this it is a good idea to mention to your partner exactly why you are doing it, or they may get the wrong idea entirely. NB Avoid salad dressing if applying lettuce as an an-aphrodisiac. Eating lettuce seeds was also supposed to make a man sterile. This is probably not a reliable form of contraception. But for true cases of desperation...well, it's taken me about a quarter century of gardening to finally accept that you don't have to eat EVERYTHING your vegie garden produces. Lettuces makes the most excellent mulch...rich in nitrogen, and totally weed free. It doesn't even need salad dressing. Lettuce salad Like bread, rice and other basics, a lettuce salad can be wonderful - or horrible. Firstly, make sure the lettuce is fresh. It must also be dry - either drain it well, or better still, just wipe it with a damp cloth, instead of rinsing it. Never soak lettuce - if it's limp try putting it in the fridge to crisp it, not in water. Mix in the dressing at the last minute, or it'll go soggy. Don't beat a lettuce salad like a cake - the most gentle mixing possible is best, either with a broad spoon or even with your hands. Lettuce and crouton salad Take large chunks of very fresh french bread. Toast it very lightly. The outside should be crisp while the inside is soft. Dress your lettuce salad, then add the toasted bread chunks at the last minute. Serve at once. The light toasting will help stop the dressing soaking into the bread (as long as the lettuce isn't swimming in vinaigrette). Thin slivers of cold chicken and a few pistacios also go well mixed into this salad with the bread. Lettuce Soup This is good when you want to use up all those lettuce seedlings you planted too lavishly or if you're a canny soul and just can't bear to waste the outside leaves and don't have a rabbit. Simmer one cup of lettuce (I know it's hard to judge this but the exact proportions don't matter) in three cups of chicken stock for five minutes or thereabouts. Purée. Heat again or chill. Serve with a splash of cream or light sour cream and maybe a sprinkle of well chopped parsley or a little winter or summer savoury or fresh dill.
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