Book review: The Salad Garden

The latest edition of Joy Larkcom’s classic, The Salad Garden, has been sitting on my ‘to review’ pile for some weeks now. It’s not that I didn’t want to read it – I did read it. It’s just that it’s extremely dense, in the sense that it contains a lot of useful information about a lot of useful plants. It’s not a book you can read quickly, digest, and move on from. It’s a reference manual that will be part of your collection for years. Forever, probably.

In the introduction, Larkcom talks a little bit about her salad-growing history, including the tour of Europe she and her family embarked on. Then we’re straight into the plants – divided into Leafy Salad Plants, Brassica tribe, Oriental greens, Stems and Stalks, Fruiting vegetables, the Onion family, root vegetables and Finishing Touches.

“An enormous range of plants can be used in salads, from familiar garden vegetables to wild plants and weeds. As space is limited, lesser known plants have priority in The Salad Garden.”

There are plenty of less common plants to read about. In Mild-flavoured greens you’ll find Leaf amaranth, Orache, Texsel greens, Salad rape, Tree spinach, Alfalfa, Winter purslane, Iceplant, February orchid, Summer purslane and Corn salad. In Strong-flavoured leaves Larkcom explores Land cress, Chrysanthemum greens, Rocket and wild rocket, Turkish rocket, Garden cress, Watercress, Sorrel, Salsola, White mustard, Dandelion and Fenugreek.

Finishing touches is all about the herbs and edible flowers that can enliven salads, and includes a large section on weeds and wild plants.

The back third or so of the book is the gardening information – site, soil, watering, etc. It has some very salad-specific sections, including a chart of species that can be grown as