Growing Corn Salad ( GYI)

 

Corn Salad

Often considered a weed, corn salad (also known as lamb’s lettuce) is a super-hardy and low-growing winter salad with a mild, nutty flavour. It is one of the winter-hardy salad leaves we sow at GROW HQ in the late summer and early autumn to last through the winter. We generally do a couple of sowings every two to three weeks from September to keep us going, with occasional pickings of winter leaves until the new season salads arrive in spring.

SOWING

• Corn salad is usually grown as an autumn/winter salad, but can be grown year-round.
• For an autumn/winter crop sow in August and September.
• It can be sown in modules and transplanted, but is easier to sow direct.
• If sowing direct, sow thinly 1-2cm deep in rows 15cm apart.
• If sowing in modules, sow one seed per module and transplant when they have outgrown the tray, spacing them 10cm in rows 15cm apart.

GROWING

• The crop can be thinned to 3-5cm between plants, which tends to give larger leaves, but will happily grow unthinned.
• It is a relatively slow grower, but will keep growing in all but the coldest weather.
• Keep the area weed free and moist if the weather is dry.

HARVESTING

• Cut the growing tips from the plants with scissors when about 5-8cm tall. New shoots will grow back.
• You should get around 3-4 harvests throughout the months.
• The shoots are still usable when the plants begin to flower, though tend to become unusable when the flowers mature.

TIPS

• Corn salad is a surprisingly strong performer when it comes to nutrition, and is one of the healthiest of all salads. It has three times as much vitamin C as lettuce and more iron than spinach.
• Corn salad is often known as lamb’s lettuce.