Experiments in winter growing

As I will be residing in London for a couple of months I decided it was time to continue my adventures in growing your own so I sent off for some organic winter salad seeds to have a go at growing lettuce leaves http://www.seedsofitaly.com/catalogue/13. After some research I decided on lambs lettuce apparently a great choice for winter and can be grown under a cloche or sown as an edible green manure (multifunctional), Meraviglia D'inverno (winter marvel) from the italian mountains and Spinach Gigante D'inverno (giant winter spinach). My first attempt at planting seeds was disrupted by the resident squirrels who decided to dig up the pots as with winter coming I guess they were looking for nuts for their food store so I had to re-plant them and protect them with cloches. So far they have survived and some little shoots are coming through. I am excited at the prospect of having fresh salad leaves through the winter especially when the supermarkets charge quite a lot for a bag of salad leaves that's been exposed to argon gas to preserve it- yuk!

Lambs lettuce - leave the cloche open on sunny days to prevent it bolting

Micro Greens
Excited by the sight of little green seedlings coming through in the pots outside I thought I'd also give 'Micro greens' a go and make use of my south facing bedroom window. In recent times micro greens and baby leaf herbs have become very popular with chefs in up market restaurants. I've also noticed things like pea shoots and garlic chives appearing on supermarket shelves, again these are quite expensive to buy and seem easy enough to grow all year round. You just need a growing tray, some organic peat free compost, organic seeds, water and daylight.  The list of seeds you can use is pretty long, sorrel, chervil, basil, dill, pea shoots, mustard, nasturtium, watercress, rocket and all the oriental greens like mizuna, red mustard and pak choi to name just a few. So I bought a few different types http://www.tamarorganics.co.uk and created my own mix of seeds and planted them 3 days a go, they are already growing really well. I will keep you posted on their progress...

Organic seeds used as part of micro greens mix

Grow micro greens indoors all year round

Micro greens day 7 - nearly ready to eat!