How to Grow Winter Vegetables and Salads

Winter vegetables and salads 

Leafy winter salads give very good value for the space available in an unheated greenhouse, and this need not mean just lettuce - many chicories, endives, and oriental brassicas, for example, are hardier and less trouble to grow. They will provide you with leaves of different reds and greens, and mild and hot flavours, that you rarely find in the shops.

Sowing these crops in late summer will ensure that plants are established and harvesting can begin before winter sets in. Although at this time the greenhouse borders are often taken up with tomatoes and other summer crops, the problem can be overcome.

• Set aside a part of the border to be cleared in late summer. You can use this space for an early crop of courgettes or beans.
• Sow in pots or modules for transplanting when summer crops are cleared.
• Space late plantings closely and cut them earlier, before they are mature. Many will resprout.
• Sow seedling crops (see helpful tip below).

Although many vegetables will give an early harvest if sown under cover in autumn or early spring, most take up too much space to give worthwhile yields in a garden greenhouse. Radishes, spring onions, and carrots are useful exceptions, whilst mangetout peas, florence fennel, and spinach may be worth a try if you have room. Usually, no special preparation is needed for borders that have already been manured or composted for summer crops, but it is important to maintain the crop rotation.

Helpful tip:

Seedling crops

A quick way to produce a salad crop is to broadcast a patch of seed relatively thickly, and to cut the leaves when they are very young, generally 5— 7.5cm high. Crops that can be grown like this include cress, salad rape, spinach, lettuce, and salad rocket. You can also buy mixtures of seeds, or mix your own. Only small patches are needed, but the seed-bed must be fine and weed-free. The crop can be ready for cutting in as little as four weeks, even in late autumn or early spring. The seedlings will usually resprout, and can be cut several times.

Cut-and-come-again crops 

Many plants will resprout even if they are cut when more mature: for example, many chicories, endives, and loose-leaf or cutting lettuces. Often, plants cut in autumn will overwinter as not much more than a stump, but will produce a fresh crop of leaves in the spring.