Ice Plant – Mesembryanthemum crystallinum
€2.20
Description
Ice Plant – Mesembryanthemum crystallinum – is generally grown as an ornamental plant but also very useful as a salad ingredient with its silvery leaves and succulent texture. It’s one of Joy Larkcom’s favourite salad ingredients.
Sowing:
April to June. Sow 3 seeds per module about 1cm deep and about 4 weeks later plant out.
Spacing:
Between rows: 25cm
Between plants: 25cm
Approx. seed count: 200
Ice Plant – Mesembryanthemum crystallinum is one of the most unusual salad ingredients with its heavy succulent leaves as well as its beautiful multi-coloured flowers. It is only rarely grown as a salad plant. I find the taste quite bland and watery and am a little bit surprised why not more restaurants are using this highly decorative novel salad crop as a decoration as well as a salad crop. I would highly recommended Ice Plant as an unusual new salad crop besides the standard types of salad leaves.
As mentioned above – Joy Larkcom has introduced numerous novel salad and vegetable crops to the UK and Ireland. She is one of my great gardening inspirations. Her numerous gardening books are a real treasure. In her book “The Salad Garden” she describes the Ice Plant – Mesembryanthemum crystallinum in detail.
More information:
Have a look at my newsletters on:
https://greenvegetableseeds.com/newsletters/
For good monthly gardening advice have a look at the Irish Garden magazine:
