January Sowing & Cropping In My Garden & Home 2023 Is As Varied and Unusual As I Can Make It. This Article Explains What I Grow & How.
When others shut down their plots and hibernate their gardens I adopt a full steam ahead strategy. As well as conventional crops of leeks, cabbage and other winter veg I grow as many salad crops as I can. Plus I’m sowing crops from my January Sowing List
Though many people think salads are for summer and are very tender, nothing could be further from the truth. And if you don’t believe it look at the first image below. Mixed leaves … from beetroot and lambs lettuce to wasabi rocket and oriental greens of various sorts. These are to decorate the plate on a scallop starter this evening. But alongside them we have Chinese cabbage with also copes with our recent -6C temperatures with no trouble (all of them can go down to much lower temperatures and cope well).
Look also at the lettuce plant that was razed to the ground. One or two had a bit of botrytis, but other than rip them out I cut the stem short and left it to regrow, This growth has appeared since Christmas despite the below freezing temperatures. Lettuce are tough plants and cope well with freezing unless they have hearts up .. then they easily rot and die! So to keep them growing harvest a few leaves every week and encourage them to keep growing.
Then there’s baby leeks. Jus like you see in the best restaurants where they charge extra because they are small. Believe or not the large leeks shown below are exactly the same plants as the small ones. Same seed, same seedbed. same planting date. It’s not that the baby ones didn’t make it. I purposely grew them small.
How?
Easy. Plant them very densely so they don’t have much space and grow them in an area with more shade than the ones you want to grow bigger. The dense planting and reduced light means they grow much slower. I’ve written more on which veg plants prefer shade in another post. When other gardeners are going for huge crops to adorn the show bench, I want really tasty small plants I can enjoy all winter.
Finally, if you don’t have outdoor space then consider the plants you can grow in pots or trays on a windowsill. The mung beans in the final image shows what can be aimed for. I’ll be writing a new post on Bean Sprouts very soon!
What are you harvesting right now? Comment below.
And tell me about the topics you’d like me to write about in future.
Join the Facebook Groups Here
To join the How to Dig For Victory Facebook group follow the link.
And here is the link to UK Garden Flowers, Trees, Shrubs & More
#BiteSizedGardening #Gardening #Vegetables #veg #fruitandveg #allotment #biointensive
Tag: January Sowing & Cropping In My UK Garden
Related Posts:
