Tasty and beautiful, with its vibrant green leaves and a riot of intensely violet flowers which seem to go on for months. It can be sown in the spring, but from an autumn sowing undercover, will also give you a burst of colour in late winter; hence its other name, the February Orchid. Every part of this lovely salad crop is edible, so as well as using the tasty leaves, you can also add the beautiful flowers in too.
Like most other salad crops, you can sow them successionally from mid-spring, but can also be sown in the autumn in a greenhouse, where they’ll over-winter quite happily. The first flowers will come in late February, when everything else is looking bare, and they’ll keep on flowering right through till June. The plants themselves are bushy, growing to about 2ft in height, and prefer a well drained, sunny position. Great for pollinators, they also work beautifully in hanging baskets.