In the last of four extracts adapted from her new book, A Year Full of Veg, Sarah Raven considers the rich pickings the vegetable patch continues to offer through autumn and winter
Despite the vegetable garden starting to look and feel wintery, we’re able to pick something for almost every meal in November and December. There is such a range of produce out there that will grow happily for us, even now.
I can’t deny that some of the winter-hardy plants are far more abundant grown under glass, so if you have a coldframe, greenhouse, polytunnel or even a series of glass or plastic cloches, do use them. We grow a mix of salads and hardy annual herbs in our glasshouse here, but certainly in Sussex this protection is not essential. The most cold-resistant of these greens, such as parsley, mizuna, mustard ‘Red Giant’ and American land cress, may falter under snow or after several successive days of frost, but even without a cover, they won’t die. They seem to hibernate, and then as soon as there’s a bit of sun or a general thaw they come back to life.
Depending on the severity of the season’s weather, the salad and annual herbs growing outside produce about 50 per cent less compared to those growing inside. That’s from now until March (here in Sussex), but after that the trend reverses: the indoor ones bolt as soon as you get a few sunny days, while those outside take over and often crop until May.
Out in the garden we always have statuesque kalettes and crinkly forests of kale. Varieties such as ‘Redbor’ and ‘Curly Scarlet’ have great colour as well as presence and look particularly glamorous with a sparkling dusting of rain or frost on a sunny morning, or even swathed in snow. These are by far the most splendid winter-garden vegetables and I think of them as the dowager duchesses of our veg bank, and the spring-cropping purple sprouting broccoli as their attendees.
Slightly the worse for wear but still edible are our chards (we give these the most sheltered spots over winter), evergreen herbs and fragrant and tasty pelargonium leaves. We’ve found ‘Attar of Roses’ keeps going until the first truly killer frosts, which more often than not arrive in early January.
There are benefits to winter growing beyond simply fresh greens for the kitchen. For one, there’s no need to water the plants; the heavens do that for you unless the plants
