It is time to plant your winter garden! Each autumn, as the weather begins to cool, we plant our winter salad and leafy greens garden. Before long, we will no longer need to buy lettuce, collard greens, or kale from the grocery store because we will be picking it fresh and free from the garden. Winter gardens are easier than those planted in spring; there is less heat and fewer pests. You will be surprised how easy it is to grow lettuce and leafy greens in North Florida in winter and early spring.

Add compost and leaf mulch to your garden to increase organic matter content to improve soil health. Photo by Donna Legare.

Follow these steps:

1. Select a mostly sunny spot; remove sod or weeds.

2. Prepare the soil. Add finished homemade compost or mushroom compost and mix with existing soil. If your soil is mostly hard-packed clay, plant your salad garden in a container using a mix of good potting soil and compost.

3. Your soil’s pH level should be between 5.5 and 6.8, which is ideal for growing most vegetables, leafy greens, and herbs. You may want to have a soil test done to see if you need to add dolomite lime. Read the UF/IFAS EDIS publication, Soil Sampling and Testing for the Home Landscape or Vegetable Garden (https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ss494), to learn more about soil sampling.

4. Plant in rows or in small beds no more than three feet wide so the beds can be easily weeded, and the plants fertilized and harvested. Seed directly into the beds or set out transplants. We also add a thin layer of worm castings before sowing seed.

5. Keep seed beds and transplants evenly watered. Pay attention to water needs.

6. Once established, begin a fertilization regime. For the health of Wakulla Springs and other local bodies of water downstream from your garden, use only slow release type fertilizer with at least fifty percent of the nitrogen listed as water insoluble.

7. Clip outer lettuce leaves as desired or harvest whole plants to thin the bed.

I recommend using organic fertilizer that builds the soil while feeding plants. After the seedlings have sprouted, we fertilize with a mixture of liquid seaweed and fish emulsion and water. Switch to a granular organic fertilizer, such as Plant-tone or Garden-tone, as needed.

Who is the “we” in this article? Gardening can be very satisfying to the lone gardener; however, I have enjoyed working on a three-family shared garden over the last 12 years. Our garden produces enough for all and the work is shared by all. Working in the garden together reminds me of a quilting bee, where everyone chats with each other as they work, producing a joint product.

Gardening in a garden shared with others can be very rewarding and can introduce you to new crops and gardening methods. Photo by Donna Legare.

When my son joined our garden family, he added a new element to our usual order, trying new varieties, different crops, and gardening methods. Last year he installed a three-foot-high metal bed, filling it three-fourths full of logs, twigs, and brush. Then he added a good bed mix. He planted leeks, shallots, and bulbing onions from seed and sugar snap peas along the edges. The pea plants draped down over the edges of the structure as they grew. As we thinned our lettuce and kale patches, we also thinned the leeks and onions and picked pea pods, which added lots of “free” flavor to the salads and stir-fries. He also sold me on radicchio and endive as flavorful additions to my salad.

If growing in a pot or small garden, you may decide to plant seedlings purchased from the nursery. The most economic way to grow a winter salad and leafy green garden is by planting from seed, eating the thinnings as the plants grow. Eventually, plants will be about eight inches apart and you can harvest outside leaves, though we usually have so much that we are able to keep pulling whole heads right up through the end of May.

When planting lettuce and leafy greens from seed, sprinkle the seed over the prepared bed. Then sprinkle worm castings or loose soil from the edges of the prepared bed over the seeds. Pat lightly but firmly so there is good contact between seed and soil. A rule of thumb is to cover a seed three times its diameter with soil. Lettuce and kale seeds are so small that a sprinkling of soil is all that is required to cover them. The pea seeds are poked individually into the soil to the proper depth. Be sure individual plants have enough room to grow. Planting information is given on seed packets.

Long range care of the garden

Most urban and suburban gardeners have trees in their yards. If you have trees anywhere near your garden, tree roots will invade, even in a raised bed. Once per year, we do a deep cut around each bed to cut invading tree roots. These roots will steal water and nutrients from your vegetables. We loosen the soil lightly, trying not to disturb earthworms and microscopic fungal mycelium and other beneficial organisms too much. We add organic matter to the top of each bed in fall and again in spring – either homemade compost, or bed mix with mushroom compost. We regularly mulch with leaves once the plants are up and growing.

In August, between the spring and fall garden planting, we plant cover crops of buckwheat or iron clay peas that are turned into the soil to decompose before fall planting.

The garden does not have to be big. A small three- by four-foot plot, or even a large pot, will suffice. I also sometimes plant lettuce and other winter vegetables in between dormant butterfly plants in our butterfly garden over the winter. Get started today; you can do this. Enjoy!