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GREENS for eating COOKED or RAW IN SALADS: Leaf greens like these can provide some of the best value in the garden, adding interest to your meals over a long period, often when other vegetables are scarce. Do give them all a try - we have chosen varieties that are really simple and reliable, even for beginning gardeners. Note: Dark Green = usual sowing & harvest time. Pale Green = alternatives / extensions   ~ SALSOLA - for cooking as well as salads ~ Liscari sativa (Salsola soda) This is an overlooked vegetable that is easy to grow and tastes great. Salsola has a beautiful 'candelabra' shape and crisp, crunchy thin leaves. The whole plant is simply gathered in bunches when small and either used in salads or boiled and eaten as a vegetable. Raw, it makes a really good addition to salads, slightly salty and crunchy. Our original seed came from Italy - where it is really popular - but Salsola is also used a lot in Japan , often for soups. An easy plant to grow, and a great addition to the vegetable garden. Delicious, we grow it every year in our salad beds. It is rarely available commercially because good seed is so hard to produce. Nice both cooked & raw. Seed is rarely available in the UK Order LGSA - 5g of freshly harvested seed £1.45 Sold out now until Nov/Dec 2008 when the new harvest is in. Oriental Greens (nice both Cooked & in Salads) Despite the weird names, these are some of the simplest vegetables to grow, and the nicest to eat. White-stemmed Pak Choi A rare non-hybrid Pak Choi. White stems and vase-shaped pale green heads make this a pretty addition to the garden. If you haven't grown it before (then you should!) Pak Choi has a lovely rich taste, and is very easy to grow. You use it cooked like chard or spinach, or in salads. You can pick it small (as Ben is doing in the photo) or let it grow big heads. We find it more productive picked again & again when small, as it keeps making more leaves. Organic seed grown on a small farm in Austria. Order OvWP - approx 200 seed [CO1] £1.52 When? Sow from midsummer onwards for head production, or in early spring under cover for leaf production. Why? In the heat it tends to flower rather than make heads. But the flowers are nice in salads, or cooked like sprouting broccoli. "Santoh" Quick Yellow Pak Choi A very fast growing pak choi from Japan, this has very pale green (almost true yellow) rounded leaves that can be harvested as soon as just one month after sowing. It is really good cooked or in salads. This did really well in our 2008 salad trials, and is now our standard recommendation for Pak Choi. The great thing about this variety is that it is very quick, and resistant to bolting. Most pak choi has to be sown after midsummer - but this one can do well EVEN if sown in early spring. Super-quick, ready 30 - 40 days after sowing. Can even be sown in Spring. Order OvSa - approx 300 seed £1.59 When? Three options. 1) Sow from midsummer onwards for head production. 2) sow in early spring for leaf production. 3) Or even try in late summer under cover for overwinter growing in a polytunnel. Green Boy (Quick Green Pak Choi) Another quick pak choi from Japan, this has  pale green leaves and white stems. This is the other one that did really well in our 2008 trials. It is ready to be harvested  5 weeks  after sowing, and good cooked or in salads. Quick. Can even be sown in spring. Order OvGB - approx 300 seed £1.59 When? Sow from midsummer onwards for head production, or in early spring for leaf production. Or even in late summer under cover for overwinter growing in a polytunnel. Mizuna Useful both in salads and cooked, this is a specially quick-growing variety, with deeply cut leaves. The bright green leaves have a feathery appearance and a good flavour. It is ideal as the main leafy ingredient in a salad. They give a very rapid return from a small space and provide an excellent salad crop at difficult times of the year, being tolerant of both hot and cold weather without bolting. Leaves can be ready for harvesting within 3-4 weeks of sowing, and yet plants will continue to produce for several months. High returns from a small space. Order OVMZ - approx 450 seed [CO1] £1.54 When? One of the very few you can sow most of the year without much risk of it bolting. Medium Mibuna Also quick and easy We're pleased to be able to offer this at last - a traditional non-hybrid Mibuna variety from Japan. Most varieties around now are actually hybrids, but we have managed to find this one which is not, so you can save your own seed. Mibuna is used and grown very similarly to Mizuna, both in salads and cooked. It has a slightly stronger flavour, but it is still very mild and is nice raw in salads as well as cooked as a green. Order OVMB approx 500 seed £1.10 When? Mibuna is a cool-weather plant. Normally you would sow it either in very early spring, or after midsummer. This is because in hot temperatures it is likely to bolt (flower) rather than grow lots of leaves. Tatsoi This was our new discovery in 2005. Tatsoi is another oriental veg, used like Pak Choi both cooked & raw, but whereas Pak Choi has an upright shape like a chard plant, this grows big flat rosettes more like a spinach. The flavour is great and the plants are almost foolproof. The main difference to the grower is that Tatsoi is a bit smaller but comes ready sooner than Pak Choi. We grow both! Dark green rosettes. Very quick and tasty! Again, nice Austrian seed, very carefully selected for earliness and vigour. Order OVTS approx 400 seed [CO1] £1.49 Sorry temporarily unavailable. When? Sow in mid-summer for harvesting heads starting in Autumn. Or you can try sowing in early Spring for a smaller early crop, this works very well for us. Like all the oriental veg, it will bolt in heat. Mispoona NEW - INCREDIBLY RARE This is a totally new vegetable we introduced for the first time last year. It was created by Frank Morton by crossing Tatsoi with Mizuna. We really like it. It combines the bolt-resistance of Mizuna with the big leaves of Tatsoi. You can sow it in spring or midsummer, and it very quickly makes big rosettes of dark green leaves that are delicious raw or cooked. Every time we grow it we are simply amazed by how quickly and hugely the plants head up. For a sense of scale, the yellow thing in the photo is a standard plant label! Limited seed this year, so order early. Order OVMS approx 200 seed [CO1] £1.74 When? Sow in Spring or after midsummer: like mizuna, it is very tolerant of different sowing times.   'Pe Tsai' Chinese (Winter) Cabbage Greens Another delicious cooking or salad green to help you through the difficult winter months. Pe Tsai is a richly flavoured heading 'chinese cabbage'. Not really a cabbage though - perhaps more like a frilly Pak Choi. It is easy to grow, and the leaves have a really delicious flavour raw or cooked. The pale green cylindrical heads are ideal in salads, but it's also very good stir fried in chinese dishes - you'll recognise it as a main ingredient in your take-aways once you've grown it! We like it because it is very quick to grow and head up; ready in autumn from a late-summer sowing. Sow after midsummer. Do not sow in Spring. Order OVPT - 1g (lots of seed) £1.20 "Komatsuna" Japanese Kale This new addition to the catalogue is an incredibly versatile green from Japan and Korea (a cousin of Turnip and Pak Choi) with leaves used just like Kale. It is delicious, cold tolerant and easy to grow all year. There are so many ways to grow this, you can't really go wrong. Either sow direct - or in a seedbed, or in pots and then plant out. You can sow several times from spring to autumn. The main sowings are in spring and summer. You get small plants after about 30 days, or big like a Kale plant after about 70 days - and you can harvest at any time. So best practice could be to sow in a drill about 5cm apart and then progressively thin to about 45cm apart as the plants get bigger, eating the thinnings as you go. The plant is not only delicious, but drought and cold resistant - you can also sow in late summer/autumn under cover and they will grow well overwinter in an unheated polytunnel or greenhouse. Order OVKo - approx 200 seed £1.59 ~ ORACH for cooking or salads ~ We think that Orach - also known as German Mountain Spinach - is another vegetable that should really be more widely known. It grows quickly early in the year, supplying large quantities of mild spinach-shaped leaves with a pleasant flavour and texture. They are great as a major ingredient in salads, or cooked like any of the other greens here. 'Magenta Magic' Orach A new orach variety found by plant breeder and collector John Navazio, this is really vigorous and has intensely purple leaves that look great in the garden and on the table. The disc-like seed is sown from May onwards, for harvest over the summer. Plants grow to 1m tall (looking very pretty) , but are better picked when smaller as they are nice and tender when young. Deep Purple. Specially selected for organic conditions and growing by hand on small plots. Order SaMO - lots of seed [CO1] £1.67 temporarily out of stock, new harvest due in soon.