Rocket is a first-time and last-time gardener’s staple. A sprinkle from your watering can or a shower of rain will prompt this salad necessity to pop-up after only a few days.

Pick the bright-green oval shaped leaves when they’re a few days old and they’ll taste delicately of black pepper. Forget to pick the leaves regularly and the now familiar crinkly-edged leaves will be up to 6 inches long and give your taste-buds the feeling you’ve just swigged from the Tabasco bottle.

Rocket can grow just about anywhere. I have sown it in the exposed soil created by lifting a patio slab, and this year in a trough filled with half decomposed compost and builders sand. I’ve regularly snipped the leaves and it keeps on growing …