When we filmed the TV programme At Home a couple of years ago, with me in the garden, I was amazed by the way in which people all over the world really took to it.

It wasn’t just the obvious gardeners and hippies, it was kids and burly builders who got all soft about the idea of seeing their own vegetables, salads and herbs growing.

Growing herbs and salads is just a brilliant thing to do — and if I can do it, it is proof that anyone can. Even before I had a proper vegetable and herb garden at home I grew herbs in everything from window boxes to wellington boots, old buckets and tomato tins. I even grew them in a broken dresser that I put out.

The great thing about salad leaves is that once you have propagated them you can get from planting to eating in about ten days. Seeing them grow is so exciting, and the difference between a few leaves that you pick yourself, and wash and eat within 15 minutes, and the ready-cut ones you buy in bags in the supermarket is like the difference between a lovely juicy steak and beef jerky.

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• Warm winter salad of radicchio with wild rocket and feta

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I always try to grow a good mix of colours and contrasting flavours and textures — sometimes I intersperse different leaves in one row in the garden — so you have some that are crunchy, some soft, some peppery. I’ve used raddichio in both these salads because it is one of my favourite winter leaves — I love all those incredible Italian strains of the radicchio-chicoria family, which get really good once the cold weather starts.

Without question there is a salad for every day of the year, and these brilliant winter leaves are great with smoked bacon and sausage, and interesting things such as pumpkin and squash — we have every size, shape and colour of them in the garden: striped, spotted, you name it.

Often on a Saturday with the girls we will roast a chicken and make a great big bowl of salad with whatever looks good in the garden, then have them with some nice, hot, soft flatbreads, and that’s lunch.

Jamie Oliver’s walled kitchen garden is featured in his TV series and book, Jamie at Home. jamieoliver.com

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