THE GOOD LIFE
Practical ideas and advice for would-be smallholders
SUMMER MAY BE DRAWING TO A CLOSE, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy the benefits of a delicious home-grown green salad. Sow a selection now and you can add fresh, tasty leaves to your dinner plate right the way through to spring – and avoid having to buy costly bags from the supermarket.
Perhaps it’s down to their slower growth or the more robust nature of the plants, but many winter greens pack a greater flavour punch than summer salads. So even though you won’t be able to grow the same quantities as in the warmer months, just a handful of these leaves makes a tasty partner for rich autumnal dishes.
PLANTING
For best results, you need to start sowing now, so that seedlings have a chance to grow and establish a good root structure while the soil is still warm. Continue to plant a batch every few weeks until November for a winter-long supply. If the outside temperature drops, try germinating seeds in the warm on a windowsill indoors, before transplanting the seedlings outside.
Winter salads will happily fill the gaps in your vegetable patch left by harvested potatoes, tomatoes or even their summer counterparts. But come October, when the nights start to get colder, you might need to cover younger plants with fleece to protect them from the frost. Although they’re fairly hardy, the majority of winter salads will do better in a sunny, sheltered spot where they are protected from the worst of the wind, and will do particularly well in a cold frame or unheated greenhouse. Grow them in containers in a sunny spot near the back door and not only will they benefit from the shelter the house affords, but they’ll also be conveniently at hand so you won’t be put off from harvesting them by inclement weather.
Wine crates, old Belfast sinks or even windowboxes can be stocked with plants for easy snipping. Fill with a good-quality compost and you’ll barely need to
feed them (they’re much slower growing, so less hungry than summer salads), and autumn rain means less time spent watering, too. Just make sure that any pot or container has good drainage – plants will freeze if left standing in pools of water – so raise them up on pot feet (bits of old tiles will also do the job).
HARVESTING
You can grow a mix of different varieties (see right) in one container, which makes an attractive display in a windowbox. Or sowing a single variety in each pot is the best option if you’re growing some of the mustard varieties or land cress, as they can out-compete other more delicate plants in the container.
Most winter salad leaves are ‘cut-and-come-again’, which means, with careful snipping, you can get four or five harvests from each plant. Allow them to grow to at least 10cm tall before snipping, leaving at least 3cm at the base. With enough pots or space, by the time you’ve harvested all the plants, the first ones should have grown back enough, so you can start all over again.