Salad

Cultivation and production - Market gardening

Market gardening

Production

Salad is a generic term used in market gardening and horticulture to designate various types of leaves, i.e. vegetable plants whose leaves, eaten raw, are used in the composition of a cold dish from which they have taken their name, "salad", meaning "green salad". Salads are angiosperm plants.

Some can be transplanted (chicory, lettuce), while others (lamb's lettuce, dandelion, rocket, purslane) can be sown.

Cultivated salad species and varieties

Chicory

Escarole chicory

• Chicory (Cichorium endivia L.)
  • Curly chicory (Cichorium endivia crispa)
  • Endive chicory (Cichorium endivia L.)
• Wild chicory (Cichorium intybus L.)
  • Improved wild chicory
  • Capuchin beard (etiolated after cellar forcing)
  • Endive or Witloof (Chicon in Belgium) (Cichorium intybus convar. foliosum)
  • Italian chicories: red from Chioggia, Radicchio, Verona, Treviso, etc., or green and more or less bitter.
  • Sugarloaf chicory

Lettuces

Head lettuce

The cultivated lettuces proper (Lactuca sativa) include :

• head lettuces (Lactuca sativa var. capitata) including :
  • butterhead lettuces
  • batavia lettuces
    • European batavia
    • American batavia or iceberg
• Fat lettuces (sucrine, etc.)
• Romaine lettuces (Lactuca sativa var. longifolia)
• Leaf lettuces (Lactuca sativa var. crispa) such as oak leaf or lollo lettuces
• Stem lettuces, or asparagus or celtuce lettuces (Lactuca sativa var. angustana).

Autres

• Watercress (Lepidium sativum L.)
• Watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. Brown)
• Lamb's lettuce (Valerianella locusta)
• Italian lamb's lettuce (Valerianella eriocarpa Desv.)
• Purslane (Portulaca oleracea)
• Rocket (Eruca sativa L.)
• Dandelion (Taraxacum sp.)