My new garden is occupying my every thought as I churn over possible designs and potential solutions. But I must put visions of hedges, retaining walls and paths aside for a while, as we are in the last window for sowing leafy greens for autumn and early winter.
Anything sown later than the middle of August won’t actually do anything remotely interesting until next spring. You need to get enough growth before the days really shorten – and the moment to sow is now.
Winter lettuces, both salad and wild rocket, parsley, coriander, chervil, lamb’s lettuce/mache, landcress, plus all the Asian greens – mizuna, rosette-forming pak choi, leafy mustards and tatsoi – are the mainstays of winter herbs, salad and braising greens.
Rocket, landcress and Asian greens will be swiftest to germinate as they are in the brassica family, so you’ve got a longer time to sow these into September. Real Seeds is my go-to for unusual varieties.
Parsley will take the longest to germinate and will need some sort of protection to keep going into autumn if grown outside; the same goes for coriander – that won’t survive the winter uncovered. I use bell cloches, but you do need to make sure you’re not trapping tiny slugs and snails in with the young plants. Look for coriander varieties bred for leaf rather than seed production: ‘calypso’ and ‘leisure’ are two reliable varieties.
There are a number of winter lettuces to choose from. Again, winter lettuce can be sown into the beginning of September, but even if you have a polytunnel to grow them in, you won’t be picking the September-sown leaves until March.
Rather than sow a whole packet at once, sow a pinch of seeds every two weeks until early September and you’ll have a continuous supply through winter. “Valdor” and “Marvel of Four Seasons” are two excellent butterheads that do fantastically well in colder weather. If by chance the temperature properly drops and we get snow and hard frosts, you’ll have to cover them with fleece, but otherwise they’ll cope well on their own.
These are large lettuces though, needing at least 30cm between seedlings so they can grow to full size. Part of a plant’s ability to survive colder temperatures relies on having a deep and wide root run. If you try to squeeze them, you’ll compromise this. You’ll also get bitter leaves as plants compete for water that can get locked up in the soil in colder weather. For this reason, I grow “winter gem”, a little baby gem lettuce bred for cold hardiness that grows to half the size, but it means it grows well in pots and is easy to cloche. I keep mine near the back door, where not only is it more protected, but I don’t have to get cold grabbing last-minute leaves for my supper.
