Grow your own veg box

Winter vegetables

Image: Hardy stalwarts, second week in February (from top left): parsnip ‘Gladiator’; squash ‘Butternut Hunter’; celeriac ‘Monarch’; potato ‘Mira’, leek ‘Bandit’; carrot ‘Longue Lisse de Meaux’; beetroot ‘Cheltenham Green Top’; swede ‘Airlie’.

Although winter can seem lean compared to autumn, there is still a great choice of seasonal vegetables with rich flavours to lift our spirits and sweet starches to keep us warm.

Parsnips are sweetest of all, especially after frost, and can be dug when needed because they keep well in the soil (until April when their leaves regrow with flowering stems). Initially they grow slowly from early spring sowings. Parsnip ‘Gladiator’ is good at resisting canker.

Leeks are a winter staple, with hardy cultivars such as ‘Bandit’, ‘Atlanta’ and ‘Musselburgh’. Unlike all the brassicas, which often need netting, leeks are of no interest to pigeons. Brussels sprouts, Savoy cabbages and kales all resist frost well, offering nutritious and vitamin-rich green leaves throughout winter. By March they can be sending up flowering shoots, but these are surprisingly tasty as well.

Planning

Swedes are also brassicas, but pigeons do not like the highly flavoured roots, which can stay outdoors all winter. So can beetroot ‘Cheltenham Green Top’, which is especially hardy and sweet. Round beetroot and celeriac can suffer frost damage in temperatures below about -5°C (23°F), so they are better harvested in late autumn and stored in a cool, frost-free shed until late winter.

Some vegetables such as winter squashes, onions and garlic keep well indoors at room temperature, and forced chicory can even be grown in the house if you keep it in darkness.

If you sowed them in August you could also be eating vibrant green land cress, claytonia (winter purslane), corn salad (lamb’s lettuce), rocket and leaf chicories from outdoors, especially in March as winter gradually cedes to spring.

Detailed growing information