In my postage stamp-sized veggie beds, I have the same problem every year. The time to start planting winter veg also happens to coincide pretty perfectly with peak harvest for my summer ones. By the time I have eked out the last crops of tomatoes, chilies and beans in October and gotten round to clearing out and mulching the beds it’s, well… about now. If this sounds like a familiar problem to you, don’t worry, you haven’t missed the bus, there are still three super-hardy crops you can plant right now.
Broad beans
One of the easiest and most reliable of all veg to grow. The variety ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ is a great one to sow at this chilly time of year, offering up pretty flowers in the spring followed by tasty pods. However, I tend to think of the pods themselves as a sort of secondary harvest to the fresh green growing tips. These have a wonderfully sweet, pea meets pistachio flavour when fried in a little butter or olive oil. The best bit? You have to nip these tips out to discourage blackfly, so two crops for the effort (and space) of one.
French grey shallots (aka Griselle or échalote grise)
Highly prized by French chefs for their rich, sweet, complexity, this variety is almost never found for sale in UK greengrocers, but funnily enough is easy to find in seed catalogues. So if you want to try its incredible depth of flavour, you’ll just have to grow your own. There is a reason for its unique eating qualities, too, botanically speaking these aren’t true shallots at all, or even French! In fact, they are a distinct species Allium oschaninii that hails from the mountains of southwest Asia. Plant now to harvest next June.
Lettuce ‘Meraviglia d’Inverno’
Not all lettuce varieties are suited to winter growing, but the unique genetics of this Italian heirloom means it has exceptional cold tolerance – hence its name, Marvel of Winter. But how does it fair in Britain? Actually pretty amazingly, with mine sailing valiantly through even the epic 2010 freeze (protected only by a thin plastic cloche). Tastewise it stacks up well, too, with a classic, crisp “butterhead” flavour.
Growing lettuce in the cooler months has other benefits as well. First, it is much slower growing than if planted in the summer, which means you get a longer season of harvest without them bolting into flower. I have picked mine for four months from one bed. But for me, most important of all, there are also no slugs about at this time of year. In fact, on my plot they are so voracious I now only grow lettuce in the winter.
Email James at james.wong@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @Botanygeek
