If you’re taking part in the 52-week salad challenge and are struggling rather to get together a good bowl of leaves, take a walk and forage for some leaves. Here are some of the best.

1. Hairy bittercress

Image copyright nz_willowherb

It is almost impossible not to find abundant supplies of this cheeky little annual weed. It isn’t hairy as its name suggests, and tastes rather like the stuff you see bagged up for £3 in your local supermarket. The best thing about hairy bittercress is that its season is all year round, so even if you’re foraging in the depths of winter, you’ll still pick enough for a hearty salad.

2. Garlic mustard

Image by Cat

This plant can be a bit of a pain, being invasive in some areas, so no-one is going to scold you for harvesting its leaves. You’ll only catch their garlicky punch when  you start eating them, though, and you won’t need tons of them to give your salad an edge. Pick the leaves before the flowers open, otherwise the taste becomes a bit too much.

3. Chickweed

Image by Sarah

Make friends with a gardener who spends half their life pulling up this pesky plant from beds where it is not welcome, and you’ll forge a long relationship. This is another plant that is cheekily still growing in the depths of winter, and you’ll find that it returns, no matter how much you harvest, thus providing you with lettuce-like leaves, and your friend with a keen forager to weed their garden throughout the year.

4. Fat hen

Image by Jeremy Cherfas

As well as having a wonderfully comical name, fat hen is a free spinach that grows on recently-disturbed ground. Eat the smallest, young leaves.

5. Sorrel

Image by Anne Tanne

This is another spinach-like plant, but with a slightly lemony kick. Harvest the young leaves in the spring and use as the base for your salad.

Other leaves

You can also forage dandelion leaves, which are wonderfully peppery. Only pick young leaves – the older ones are far too tough. Try young lime leaves, and violet leaves.

It goes without saying that all of these salad leaves should be harvested from an area that you are confident is not regularly sprayed with pesticides, or used as a toilet for dogs. If you’re confused about whether a leaf is safe to eat and can’t identify it, don’t eat it.

Don’t forget to follow others taking part in the salad challenge on twitter using the hashtag #saladchat. And if you don’t have your own blog but want to write a post about your own experience of the challenge, then use our Your Blogs section.