chopped chicory
Freshly picked salad from your own garden tastes different than what you buy from the supermarket, and make sure you don’t eat any chemical fertilizers or, even worse, pesticides. As it is a vegetable that does not keep for long, it is better to plan staggered planting which will allow you to have fresh salads almost all year round.
The most critical months are winter (November to February), due to frost, and summer , July and August, due to the heat. In summer, too high temperatures can cause lettuces to suffer, so you can easily intervene by shading and irrigating if necessary.
In southern and central Italy, where the climate is milder, it is easy keep the salad even in winter , while in the north frost can ruin it. Some tips however, they can mitigate the cold and extend the useful life of this vegetable in our garden:
- Padded. It keeps the root system protected, delaying soil freezing. It helps a little to resist the cold even if it does not solve the problem.
- Nonwoven. Covering salad plants at night and uncovering them during the day with non-woven fabrics can save the plants, although it is a bit laborious.
- Cold tunnel or greenhouse. A small cold tunnel, which can also be tinkered with transparent tarpaulins and plastic tubes of electric cables, can gain a few degrees by accumulating the heat brought by the sun during the day.
What salads to grow in autumn and winter
- cut the lettuce . They are among the most cold-resistant salads. Chopped lettuce resists better than head lettuce. Water on the head stops lettuce, which can freeze and spoil the vegetable. If it’s cold, the lettuce may slow its growth until it stops, then start to thaw again in the spring.
- Valerian . Another brave salad that can withstand low temperatures and be grown over winter in not too harsh climates or with the necessary protections.
- Chicory, chicory, Milanese salad, radicchio, arugula, wild lettuce Is. These are all varieties of lettuce that can be grown in the fall, they resist the cold better than other vegetables but they do not tolerate frost. They can grow in the winter garden in warm areas or with adequate protection. In cold winters, even with tunnels, it will be difficult to maintain them all year round.
If you want to know which vegetables can be grown in the garden during the colder months, you can read the page dedicated to winter vegetables, which shows which crops can populate the garden during the winter.