I am missing my home grown salad

[Mumwhensdinnerready]

I 'm pretty much self sufficient in lettuce from May to October and I grow cucumber, tomatoes and peppers as well.
I hate shop bought lettuce , tasteless imported tomatoes etc.
I avoid them for a while but then I crave some salad and buy some more only to be disappointed as usual.

Bumping for you.

Could you satisfy your cravings with salads made with seasonal produce?

I had lambs lettuce salad this evening, with walnuts and apple in it.
Chicory, white cabbage, grated carrots, beetroot also make a good salad base.
My fave winter salad is couscous or quinoa with warm steamed leeks and feta cheese.

"Chicory, white cabbage, grated carrots, beetroot also make a good salad base"

I didn't mean all together.

Oh and spinach, yum!

Me too.I waa bemoaning this today.I had to buy shop tmatoes and I just know they'll taste of nothing.

Can you get a portable cloche and sow some lettuce? I have a polytunnel and am still getting lettuce from there.Roll on spring though!

I have a cold greenhouse but have tried and failed with so called winter salad greens.
I do use some of the ingrediants suggested but they all seem second best compared to fresh summer leaves. And much as I love cooked cabbage ( I have a good crop of curly Kale this year), I don't like raw cabbage.

I think maybe if we stick to eating seasonally then we appreciate it when foods come back into season?

Yes, it's not the same. I miss fresh tomatoes and strawberries.

I was saying to DS at breakfast (who asked for strawberries) about how much we will appreciate them when they are back in season.

I never have any success with winter lettuce leafs & I'm missing salads too though we did have a home grown sweet pepper from the kitchen windowsill with a shop lettuce tonight which was lovely.

Can you tell us what sort of polytunnel FuriousGeorge and what type of lettuces & when you sowed them and so on and so forth. I was thinking of buying a small tunnel with a garden centre voucher I was given for xmas, but am not sure if I should get a fleece or plastic one and exactly what I'd use it for - but winter salad would be lovely...

yes, I have some lambs lettuce and chard but it's all pathetically small

You need one of these.

What winter salad leaves are you growing MWDR? ATM we're mostly eating pak choi, chinese cabbage, a mild mustard green, mibuna, baby chard, baby kale and some lettuce but not enough to make the bulk of a salad. Usually I'd also have mizuna but for some reason I didn't put any in this autumn. They're all in a tunnel, I've also got some more outside under cloches which are ok but don't put on bulk so much after being picked. I would have expected a cold greenhouse to be better than a tunnel - mind you depends where you are, we are in Wales so not super cold, but pretty exposed & windy.
Overall I would say we have better salad leaves through the winter than in summer as they don't go to seed so fast & are tastier, plus maybe I put more effort into the greens as I like gardening in the tunnel out of the rain

Takver I haven't tried to grow any winter salad leaves this year as had failed miserably in previous years. I tried some of the ones you mentioned and while they germinated well enough they never really got going after that.
I wonder whether I should get them going earlier? I'm usually overrun with summer plants in the spring and any long term planning for winter gets left. I'll get a selection of seeds this year and try sewing them when I do the spring stuff.
We're in the north east but mostly very sheltered. My poor greenhouse got a battering in high winds last month when the door blew open. By morning the garden was studded with shards of glass

about the greenhouse, the winds can be really grim here too sometimes as we are near the coast.
I generally sow winter salad stuff in late July for going outside under cloches, or in mid August for growing in the tunnel. Then I keep sowing about once a month, but mostly to carry us through into spring - I just transplanted the seedlings from end November & they are still teeny tiny . . .