Читать книгу Kitchen Memories - Lucy Boyd - Страница 23

Broad-leaved rocket is incredibly easy to grow as a cut-and-come-again salad leaf. It has a wonderful peppery flavour that goes so well with tomatoes, or if you need a leaf that ‘cuts’ into other flavours, or as an alternative to flat-leaf parsley. It is just so useful to have available on your windowsill or in the garden – you will always have some fresh green leaves to add to your meal without having to go and buy the commercially produced wild rocket, which tends to lack flavour.

Rocket will grow pretty much anywhere, in shade or sunlight. You can sprinkle a few seeds in pots that contain trees, shrubs or perennials, or on a bare patch of soil. It germinates in a few days and can be picked after a few weeks. The first growth is less peppery than the second, when the stems become thicker and the leaves a slightly darker green with a stronger flavour. March/April is a good time to sow seed – every twelve weeks or so will give a continuous crop. When the summer gets going the plants tend to bolt, producing small, delicate, white flowers, which can be used in salads. After this the plants will be too tired to produce anything more worth picking, by which time your new sowing will have got under way and should be ready for picking the first young leaves.

Rocket will self-seed if you leave the flowers on. Sow direct around mid-March as the ground starts to warm up.