Growing Salad

lisa26_2

I bought some seeds for growing salad leaves but never got on with doing them over the summer. Bags of leaves in the supermarket are soooo expensive. Does anyone know if I could grow them in a pot on the windowsill know its winter?

LJM

i would give it a try herbs grow all through the year,you may want to try posting on the green finger board they may be able to help more

mardatha

I got told to try it but it didnt work. However I suppose it depends how far south you are...my chives were like sickly grass LOL

henbane

Hi
As I'd left it late I bought small plants, 60 x mixed salad, lettuce, rocket, landcress, claytonia and purslane. I turned over my unheated greenhouse to salad for the winter, I'd be interested to see how long it lasts. At the moment they're growing on well, I keep the plants damp on matting in large trays, one plant to a pot. At the moment, from plants put in at the beginning of October I've had 7 bags of salad and the plants are still doing well.
Perhaps you could get small plants from the garden centre or somewhere like Delfland on the Internet. If not a good plan for next year.
Henbane

Penelope_Penguin

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Smoffi

At the end of the day do what most of us have done... trial and error.. you can only learn from mistakes.. and you will have fun doing it

Try easy salad stuff.. rocket, radishes, Cress, Pak Choi (Chinese lettuce things), Celery (just 2 or 3) Beetroot, and of course other salad leave things

Every window ledge will be filled I think by the time you are finished lol

cheerfulness4

Lisa - over on the 'live on 4k a year' thread one of the girls was saying that she grows hers throughout the winter and she lives in Scotland, so not the warmest of areas. She has grown hers under plastic outside. Heard others say they grow all year on the windowsill.
I'm certainly planning to give it a go.

squack

i sow lots of salads in september when the main summer stuff is on its way out, this is in a small polytunnel but a greenhouse or cold frame would be just as good. this will provide me with a wide variety of fresh baby leaves throughout the winter, in fact for rocket and oriental mustards etc it is a better time as the shorter daylength and cooler temperature prevents them going to seed prematurely as they do in the warmer seasons.

i have to be vigilant about damping-off, slugs etc, and obviously in the winter salad plants grow very slowly and have to be picked sparingly so the plant grows back.

another great thing is watercress. you can grow it in pots of soil, no need for water. you can break pieces off and push it in and it roots and grows. if you buy a bag from the supermarket this week try rooting some.

foxgloves

When the aubergines & cucumbers were finished in our greenhouse, I remembered reading somewhere that there'll be sufficient nutrients left in the growbags for some winter salads so I did rocket seeds in one and mizuna seeds in the other. Both are doing fine. Have grown as 'cut & come again' rather than bothering with pricking out, etc, and have already had 3 really good bowlfuls of rocket, which is still growing well and have just cut the first of the mizuna. Also put some lettuce in which was supposed to do OK over winter and it's OK, am pulling the occasional few leaves, but it isn't doing as well as the rocket & mizuna so maybe they are what I'll stick with in future. If it helps, I think the rocket variety was called 'Skyrocket'- can't remember how much the seeds cost but I bet it wasn't more than what one small gas-filled bag of leaves would cost in the supermarket. So, worth a try if plenty of light, I would say. (There is no heat in our greenhouse).

Primrose

A very hardy salad for growing at this time of year is Endive. It seems to suffer lower temperatures more than the other delicate salad leaves do. I'm growing some in large pots outside covered with large empty water cooler cloches. One important issue as well as temperature, is the low level of light during winter months so if you have a window sill which gets a lot of sun, even in winter you have a good chance of growing a small crop of leaves.

cootambear

I would like to grow some winter salad leaves. What do peeps recommend and where would I get the seeds? Many TIA