Lettuce All Winter in the Organic Garden

Keep Salad as Local as Your Garden with Tips for Winter Greens

Sep 13, 2009

With fall planting and some frost protection, you can have fresh lettuce and other greens even though winter has arrived.

Lettuce and many other salad greens are cool-season vegetables; they grow best when temperatures are in the 50s and 60s. With some planning and crop covers, you can harvest greens until temperatures fall in the freezing range.

Choose a Cold Hardy Lettuce Variety

Choose a lettuce variety that can take frost. Many of the cos or Romaine varieties do well in low temperatures. Look especially for “Winter Density,” an upright cultivar that can take even a heavy frost in a cold frame or under a row cover.

Steve Solomon, author of Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades (5th Edition, Sasquatch Books), says some lettuce varieties will hold to as low as 19 degrees Fahrenheit when grown under cover.

With a name like “Arctic King,” it is not surprising that this lettuce braves the worst maritime winters. If your climate is not maritime, you should provide cover for it. Because it takes 150 days to mature, you can sow it from August through September for harvest in February to March. Planted together with “Winter Density,” you may have fresh lettuce all winter.

A cross between Romaine and Iceberg lettuces, Batavian lettuces are also good choices for the winter greens patch. One butterhead variety, the heirloom Lettuce Four Seasons, forms a head with a tinge of red on the leaves and a creamy center and is cold hardy.

Find a Spinach that Overwinters

“Giant Winter Spinach” needs 45 days to mature, so plant it in September for a pre-Christmas crop. Under cover, it should hold until a freeze. If you live where Winter temperatures seldom get to freezing, you can plant “Bloomsday” as late as October; it will overwinter and be harvestable in early, early spring. If you do get freezing, give both varieties the protection of a cloche or row cover.

“Baby’s Leaf” is a hybrid spinach that is ready for salad in 30 days, so you can even succession sow this for several weeks and get it under cover when frosts are expected. If you want to cook it, you need to wait 45 days for it to reach full maturity.

A Variety of Greens to Grow In the Cold

Mustard, many oriental greens, some radicchios, collards, arugula, kale, chard, and many other leafy plants are great for winter salads. You can also sauté them as a side dish or add them to hearty soups. Collards and Kales taste even better when touched by frost.

“Flash” (55 days) and “Champion” (60 days) need to be planted in August for late fall harvest. Both should overwinter under cover and be harvestable in early spring.

“Tah Tsai Mustard” is a spinach/mustard that grows well in cool weather. Solomon reports it stays green all winter in his Oregon garden. “Rocket” Arugula (35 days) likes cool weather and can be sown for late fall harvest.

“Red Russian” is a lovely heirloom kale that needs 60 days to mature, but is improved with a touch of frost and can be left in the garden all winter to starting growing again in early spring. Keep it under cover if you want it to keep growing.

The kale “Dwarf Blue Curled Vates” (55 days) is another kale you can leave in the garden all winter; it will continue to produce in USDA Zone 6 and higher. Row cover should bump your kale row up one zone if you live in Zones 5 or 4.

Tips for Winter Gardening Success

The copyright of the article Lettuce All Winter in the Organic Garden in Organic Vegetable Gardens is owned by Mary Deaton. Permission to republish Lettuce All Winter in the Organic Garden in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Sep 14, 2009 9:43 AM

Guest :

There is an interactive usda plant hardiness zone map available at http://www.plantmaps.com/usda_hardiness_zone_map.php