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Seeds of all sorts of 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 from Italy - for cooking as well as salads ~ Liscari (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 leaves are 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. It is also known as Monk's Beard, Barbe di Frate, Agretti, Roscano, or Okahijiki , so you may recognise these names better. 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. Order LGSa - 10 grams of seed £1.69 Oriental Greens - From China & Japan (nice both Cooked & in Salads) Despite the weird names, these are some of the simplest vegetables to grow, and the nicest to eat. Oriental veg are very useful as they can all be sown after midsummer, to give you greens on into autumn. 'Tsoi Sim' Japanese Flowering Shoot Leaf Green NEW for 2010 An amazing vegetable from Japan, this grows very quickly - ready in just 4 weeks - giving vividly glowing green leaves and flowering shoots that are great cooked or raw. All parts of the plant has a fantastic flavour, and it is really easy to grow - harvest young when it starts to make flower shoots - just before the flowers open is ideal. You can take whole plants or snap off flower stalks with a leaf or two - it will make more. Sow repeatedly at any time, but particularly after midsummer. In late autumn, sow under cover for production over winter. Order OVSi - 1.5g (loads - about 600 seed) £1.49   When to sow? Like many oriental greens, Tsoi Sim runs to seed quicker (a response to lengthening days) if sown early in the year - but in this case that’s OK, as you’re growing it for the delicious flower stems anyways. So, sow repeatedly at any time, but you’ll get bigger plants if sown after midsummer (as it will only experience shortening days.) "Komatsuna" Japanese Kale This new addition to the catalogue is an incredibly versatile green from Japan and Korea with leaves used just like Kale, or used raw in salads. It is delicious, cold tolerant and easy to grow all year - 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. 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 can also sow in late summer/autumn under cover and they will grow overwinter in an unheated polytunnel or greenhouse 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 also drought and cold resistant. Order OVKo - approx 200 seed £1.59 "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 and 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 £1.64 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. "Kailaan" stem broccoli This is a useful & very easily grown green we are adding to the catalogue this year. Kailaan is from China and Japan, and it's a similar plant to our normal broccoli and calabrese, in that it has been bred for its unusual flower shoot shape. The difference is that this has been selected for juicy, succulent thick stems rather than huge buds. It can be picked small (20 - 30 days old), taking whole plants at a time. Or you just leave it to grow larger (about 60 - 70 days), in which case you can get 3 cuts from it: take the main stem and it will grow new ones from the side-shoots. This is a really useful vegetable that can be sown in mid-summer or early spring to give a quick yield of juicy shoots that are cooked and used just like calabrese. Order OvKL - approx 300 seed £1.49 Green Boy (Quick Green Pak Choi) Another quick pak choi from Japan, this vigorous pak-choi has  pale green leaves and white stems. This also did really well in our 2008 trials. It is ready to be harvested just 4 - 5 weeks  after sowing, and good cooked or in salads. Quick. Can even be sown in spring. Order OvGB - approx 300 seed £1.64 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] £1.59 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 - 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 £1.12 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. Mispoona INCREDIBLY RARE This is a totally new vegetable we introduced for the first time in 2006. 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 every year, so order early. Order OVMS approx 200 seed [CO1] £1.79 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' - a plant like a frilly, heavy 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. It also does really well in our polytunnel from autumn/early winter sowings and is a staple in our winter salads. Sow after midsummer. Do not sow in Spring. Order OVPT - 1g (lots of seed) £1.36 Saving Oriental Vegetable Green Seed These greens from Japan and China are from the Brassica family (Cabbages, Kales etc) and are really easy to save seed from. Yet another reason to learn to save Brassica seed - it's the same process for all, so learning one thing lets you save lots of different vegetable seed. We would really like to encourage you to have a go at saving seed from this family - that's the cabbages, kales, oriental vegetables, broccoli and turnips. We know many of you save obvious ones like tomato and lettuce seed, but we've noticed that in the past people shied away from doing the biennial vegetables (plants that flower in their second year). Cheeringly, more people are saving brassica seed now - and we'd like to encourage you to try it too: its incredibly easy, and you get so much seed, you'll have loads to give away. There's really no need for example to buy Pak Choi seed from us every year at all. You just set aside a patch of good plants (eat any rubbish ones) , and let them flower, making sure that you've got a reasonable number, that they are healthy, and that no other sorts are flowering nearby that might cross with them. You'll get lots of seed pods in August. Many of the brassicas (turnips, cabbages, cauliflowers etc) will cross with each other very readily - so only let one variety flower each year. Flower stalks from a good-sized population are hung up to dry, then broken open over a bowl (or old baby bath in this case!). The bits of pod are screened out with a sieve or a soil riddle - but you can instead winnow them off in a breeze pretty easily if you prefer. Step-by-step instructions are here on our new brassica-seed-processing page. And of course, seed-saving is only possible because these are all real, non-hybrid varieties. It's pretty foolproof - why not give it a go?