Growing Vegetables over the Winter Months

There are endless options for the gardener when planting seeds in Spring. The choice can be so overwhelming that quite often we end up buying more seeds that we can cope with, or physically grow in the space we have. It is easy to go full throttle in March and April, to find that we have a load of vegetables ripe for picking at the same time and then....nothing!

The good news is the growing season does not end with the summer and some plants grow much better in cooler weather. Last year I made a good attempt at growing over winter and these are where my success lay:

1. Salad Leaves

I personally have little success with salad leaves in summer, too much slug activity and a good chance the plant will go to seed. Last October I planted spinach and cos lettuce and kept them under cover in the greenhouse for the winter. They grew to a certain point, maybe two inches in height and stopped.







I paid them little attention, occasional watering and planted them out in March. By May, the crop was strong and abundant and got absolutely NO slug damage. I think this was due to the leaves maturing before the slugs really got active. They must have delicate taste buds! I cut and cut from the spinach and cos plants and they kept producing leaves for months. A truly successful crop.



You may notice the flowering plants in the back ground, which are broad beans. Beans, and the other legumes, have the ability to take Nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it into the soil. Leafy veg requires high levels of Nitrogen, so they are good companion crops.

Which leads us to:

2. Broad Beans

Most gardening guides will recommend various times for the planting of broad beans. I planted them under cover last October and had so much success that I will do exactly the same this year. The reason autumn planting is recommended, is to avoid the dreaded black bean aphid infestations that early summer brings. I managed to produce a large crop of beans before the aphids came [and made easy work of my plants] and this is how I did it:

I planted the beans in window boxes and kept them in the greenhouse

By May, the tops were ready to be pinched off and steamed [delicious]

And the crop was mature for picking at the end of May

Just as the beans were ready for picking, the plants got totally covered in aphids so I dread to think what would have happened to my crop if I had delayed planting until the spring.

3. Garlic

I planted cloves from a supermarket bulb in October last year and got a small bulb from each clove which were ready for eating around the end of July. This year, I'm thinking of investing in proper seed garlic as, although I was happy with the results from the supermarket cloves, I am hoping that proper growing garlic will produce larger cloves.

4. Spring Cabbage

Cabbage is another crop that can be planted at the end of summer for spring eating.  This is my first year trying cabbage.

Seeding planted on the 10th of August [8 weeks ago]:




And some planted two weeks ago

I'll be planting them in the ground once established.



Spinach and lambs lettuce planted last week are making an appearance already. Note my lovely homemade newspaper pots as outlined here

Other vegetables I am going to sow this week include radishes and pak choi. The weather is still very mild and supposed to stay the same until the end of October so take full advantage.