The leaves have a delicious sweet flavour and are one of the more popular salad leaves that we are growing. The plant is not hardy in the colder areas of Britain and is also popular with slugs. Hairy bittercress is a common garden weed. The leaves have a hot cress-like flavour and, once you have the plant in your garden, it will normally self sow. The leaves are available all year round.
Chicory is a fairly well-known salad plant.
Although a perennial, it is best to sow the seed annually in late spring or early summer for winter leaves. Older plants tend to die down in the winter or to only produce a very small basal rosette. It is important to choose the correct cultivars - 'Sugar Loaf' is one of our favourites. The leaves have a somewhat bitter taste that many people enjoy, they can be blanched to make them milder but this will be at the expense of many vitamins and minerals. Spring beauty is about 20cm tall and usually provides leaves throughout the winter.