Salad Leaves At Canara

Hi and welcome to the latest newsletter from our very special market garden, at Canara Farm, Mylor. Today Pete will be talking about a variety of lettuce grown for our local Gourmet Baby Leaf Salad mix.

'' We have a dedicated field for the lettuce element of the gourmet baby leaf and we've got six varieties in this year. I like to grow at least two types of Batavia due to its nice frilly appearance and for being a very high yielding plant. We also have a green Butterhead lettuce called Hawking and this is one of my favourites for flavour. ''

" From seed the lettuce can take around three months to fully grow. They are quite slow growing until the end of May and a growth flush in June is a common sight for us here on the Farm. You can grow these all year round if you want to but they will take longer to become ready for harvest in a poly tunnel or greenhouse. ''

'' We also have a Spinach and Chard production and we are growing two types of baby leaf Spinach and two types of Chard. We have a long day summer Spinach called Helios and a darker coloured Spinach called Apollo. The Chard varieties growing include a lovely scarlet colour Bulls Blood Chard and a popular Red Chard. ''

'' Apollo is more of a shorter day Spinach suitable for the Autumn and Spring shoulder. I've been experimenting this year due to the overcast weather in June following a quite prolonged May drought. I made the decision to stretch out the season into the summer months and with a bit of luck we had a lovely harvest of Apollo Spinach. ''

We hope you have enjoyed reading about some of the varieties of lettuce growing at Canara farm and we look forward to sharing more with you. See you soon.