Just read a fab post by Michelle at Veg plotting about leaves that can take all this damp weather we’ve been having and one of her images was of this beauty Cos ‘Freckles’. I noticed this variety in Sarah Raven’s catalogue last year as it needed ‘plenty of water, but not too much sun’. I couldn’t have predicted the weather (or hose pipe ban!), but I hoped it might do well on a bit of ground that only gets 3 or 4 hours of sun in the morning. I merrily sowed seeds in modules at the end of February, planted them out about 6 weeks later in our community front garden and have been happily picking and eating them for the last month or so, and sharing the bounty with a few other neighbours too. Following Charles Dowding’s advice, we pick the outer healthy leaves, leaving the small inner leaves to carry on growing, enabling us to harvest over a longer period.
Although not completely devoid of slug damage, they’ve held up really well compared to other crops grown in the same garden, but I’ve also planted them bang slap in the centre of the plot, leaving other veg nearer walls to fight off (not always very successfully) armies of slugs and snails.
I love the look of this Cos lettuce, where some plants ‘freckle up’ more than others, and it has a great texture, slightly crunchy at the base, but with plenty of softness in the rest of the leaf too. Just about to sow another batch as it can be planted up to the beginning of September for autumn (and possibly winter?) leaves. Most definitely on next year’s list already.
