Beat supermarket salad rationing by growing your own ingredients

Tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce are being rationed in supermarkets.

Luckily, now is the perfect time to sow and grow your own – for bountiful crops that will taste delicious and cost a fraction of the price.

Here author, kitchen gardener and cook Kathy Slack shares her easy-to-grow guides for salad leaves, cucumbers and tomatoes.

And the best bit… you don’t even need a garden!

Tomatoes

Now is the perfect time to sow tomato seeds (late Feb/early March.) But growing the plants can be a tricky business, says Kathy. ‘However, a Tumbling Tom cherry tomato bush just requires water, organic feed and a hanging basket. Let it do its own thing and reap the rewards.’

How to grow: Buy Tumbling Tom seeds – up to six in a packet. Take a yogurt pot and poke a hole in the bottom of it. Fill with compost, put a seed in the middle and cover with a thin layer of soil. Water gently so the soil is moist, not drowned. Sow all the seeds as some won’t take.

Place on a sunny indoor windowsill and keep moist. When they reach 10cm tall in mid-May, transfer into a lined hanging basket or an old colander lined with a tea towel. One plant per container. Never let the soil dry out – this can mean up to a litre of water a day in hot weather. Weekly, use organic liquid tomato feed with seaweed. Yellow flowers, June/July; green toms form in July/August. Pick as they turn red.

Top tip: Collect twigs and stick in the soil so birds can’t land on the soil and eat your harvest.

Cucumbers

You’ll get quick rewards as a cucumber plant will start to shoot in just two weeks, says Kathy. ‘And the best bit – the more you pick, the more it will harvest.’

How to grow: Buy your seeds from the local garden centre – the Mini Munch is delicious and one of the easiest varieties to grow.

Take a single-portion yogurt pot and poke a hole in the bottom of it. Fill with peat-free compost, put one seed in the middle and push down to bury it a centimetre deep.

Water gently so the soil is moist but not drowned. Sow up to three or four seeds/pots as they won’t all work. Then place on a sunny windowsill and keep them moist. They will germinate in about two weeks.

A baby vine will shoot out between two leaves. When the vine reaches 10/15cm, plant in a bucket (with holes in the bottom) or a pot on your balcony in a sunny, sheltered spot. Make sure the frosts are over – the end of May is a good time for this.

Grow your cucumber plants against a trellis, or use string loosely tied around the plant and attached to a wall. The plant will produce little yellow flowers in June/July then fruit into tiny cucumbers August/ September. They will get bigger but are delicious when small. The more you pick, the more you get – so it’s really important to keep harvesting.

Top tip: Cucumbers are super-sensitive to weather, so water them every day in the heat and feed them every week with organic tomato feed.

Salad leaves

There is no vegetable more obliging, straightforward or gratifying than a home-grown salad leaf, says Kathy. ‘Pea shoots make delicious salad leaves and provide a bulletproof, resilient crop you can grow all year round. They’re also great in colder climates as they’ll thrive on your kitchen windowsill.’

How to grow: Buy seeds from your local garden centre. You can use any variety of pea seed and you’ll get 100-200 for about £2.

You need a pot that’s wider than it is deep, so an old rectangular ice cream tub is perfect. Fill with peat-free compost and scatter the seeds on top, 3cm apart. You can fit 20/30 in each pot. Use your finger to push each seed down to 3cm deep. Water so the soil is moist but not soaking. Place on a sunny windowsill and water every three to four days.

Once the seeds grow to about 20cm the tendrils will tangle together and that’s the time to take off the top shoots. Pinch or cut off about 5/6cm, going down to the first leaf. This cut-and-grow plant will produce shoots two or three times.

Top tip: If you plant another pot of seeds every two weeks, you will always have a harvest. This is called succession sowing.