First garden crops of season ready to eat

Harvesting edible crops from your own garden is one of the simplest pleasures that summer months dish up, and the process has just begun with radish, lettuce and spinach streaming toward the kitchen.

- BY TOM PATTINSON

This need not be just a one-off feast.

Continuity sowings will keep a fresh supply of radish and lettuce on the menu until autumn. Constant picking can secure young spinach leaves until next spring.

Heart-forming lettuce can take almost three months from sowing to maturity and are then gone in a trice.

However, non-hearting types encourage picking for micro leaves spicy, red or green within one month of sowing and are grown on a cut and come again basis.