Winter salad leaves

I love the hearty stews, roasts and other comfort food we all eat in winter, but sometimes I get the urge for a good salad. Particularly post Christmas, when it is easy to feel one has over-indulged during the festive periods. It is good to get a bit inventive with winter salads, and I like to include things like julienned root veg, citrus fruit and finely sliced sprouts, but a few interesting leaves always help meld a salad together. Many gardeners grow salad leaves in summer, but far fewer grow them in winter. There are in fact many salad leaves that will grow in winter. Here a few to have a go with.

Salad leaves

The salad bed, looking a little wild!

We've all bought those bags of mixed salad from the supermarket before: they look interesting, but most of the leaves are fairly tasteless, and once opened, the contents of the bag rapidly turn to mush in the fridge. Many salads are easy to grow, and even a few pots on a balcony can produce enough salad leaves to brighten up a shop-bought lettuce. Given a bit more space, and some judicious sowing, you can be picking home-grown leaves from mid-spring until well into the autumn.