“A little book came this week that will ensure I exploit every leafy possibility throughout the year. Salad Leaves for All Seasons (£10.95, Green Books) is Charles Dowding’s must-have for those besotted with young green leaves. He tells us how to grow lettuce in a window box and beetroot in a pot, and how to plant for leaves to harvest on the coldest days of the year. For the gardener there are planting plans and sowing instructions and hints to planting by the moon. As well as salads for window boxes, allotments and gardens, there is also much for the cook, which is why I mention it. Dowding’s unpretentious little book includes a guide to the flavour of each and every salad leaf. The only letdown is that even a man who picks salad leaves 365 days a year still hasn’t found the perfect slug deterrent.”

Charles Dowding appeared on Radio 4 's The Long View in November as historian for The Peckham Centre, established in 1935 to discover better ways of achieving and maintaining lasting good health in it's 1,000+ members of the working population in SE London. The opportunities created by it's two founding doctors for families to enjoy regular exercise, socialise actively with other members and purchase both organic vegetables and unpasteurised milk, achieved striking results that were only diluted by closure of the centre for World War 2 and subsequent financial difficulties.

See "The Peckham Experiment" by Innes H Pearse and Lucy H Crocker, published 1943 & more recently in 1985 by Scottish Academic Press.

Also click here for further information about the Peckham Experiment.

Salad Leaves for all Seasons - Organic Growing from Pot to Plot

How to grow healthy, tasty salad leaves all year round.

Small is beautiful, less is more; a salad a day - but not the supermarket way. This compendium of practical methods for growing a wide variety of salads throughout the year, will inspire you to grow your own, whether on a windowsill, in your garden or on the allotment.

Here is all the information you need for productive, healthy and tasty salads. Learn the subtleties of salad seasons and virtues of different leaves throughout the year. And when your table is groaning with the abundance of your harvests, there are delicious and imaginative recipes from Susie, Charles' wife, exploiting the fantastic flavours, colour and vitality of home-grown salad leaves