Winter Salad Experiment

So it is winter and the garden isn’t really teeming with vegetables. The frosts have arrived and although I love the swedes, parsnips, leeks and cabbages coming out of the garden I miss those summer salad crops.  But is it impossible to grow salad in the United Kingdom in the winter? The scientific part of my brain has decided what is needed is an experiment. I have included general instructions - but as with all experiments I can't promise a successful outcome! We are lucky enough to have a small room at the back of the house which has several windows and enough room to fit some shelving (but a windowsill or greenhouse would also be worth a try). This is where we will germinate seeds for the garden in spring but at the moment the space is empty and this seems the perfect place for my experiment.

I have started with some spring cleaning. The last thing you want when growing plants indoors is mould. Unfortunately this is exactly what we had in the chilli plants housed here until recently – partly due to my paranoid over watering! So I have learnt two useful lessons already – keep the place you are growing in as clean as you can and don’t over water! I have got some containers - in this case washed food containers cut to size and with some holes put in the bottom for drainage. I am trying juice cartons cut down, butter tubs and some of the trays that mushrooms come in from the supermarket. They have been filled with soil and left indoors for a week to defrost and warm up – I’m not joking it was actually frozen in places and seeds don’t like the cold!

Today I planted the seeds – I am trying fennel, spring onions, lettuce, spinach, chard and rocket. If these work then I might try some more things.  Each pot has a few more seeds then the number of plants it can support – this means that even if not all the seeds germinate we will get something (hopefully). If we are lucky enough to have all of the seeds germinate we can thin the seedlings out later. The soil should be damp but not wet (and you should not add any more water until the seeds have germinated). In order to keep the soil as warm as possible and to keep the moisture in, the pots need to go in to a propagator. If you want to try this experiment and had all the kit up until now – don’t panic! Instead of spending money on a propagator you can use a sandwich bag for each pot. Put your pot in the bag and tie the handles together (leave as much air in the bag as possible so that there is a gap between the top of the soil and the bag).

Now is the most nerve racking part of the experiment - walk away and wait to see if the seeds will germinate. Your packet of seeds should tell you how long they will take to germinate (but since we are doing it out of season it is worth leaving it a bit longer for good luck). As soon as there is some sign of life the plastic bags need to be removed. Once you have some green showing you need to keep the soil damp to the touch (but not wet). Fingers crossed there will be another post on this subject in a couple of weeks when we have some seedlings!