Eating over winter and through the hungry gap is my favourite challenge even though it’s always a bit salad and stir-fry centric. It’s a seriously green and healthy diet considering that so many people appear to be able to survive on beige food, sugar and preservatives - but the reality is that while we’re so lucky with the UK’s mild non-continental climate and can get away with growing quality food year round it requires a serious investment in setting up a more professional grow room; getting electric propagators, buying a dozen Containerwise modules, buying vitapods, having a polytunnel or greenhouse to transplant into and plenty of grow lights for 3-4 months turns a passion into a frighteningly expensive hobby pretty quickly.
One thing I wouldn’t compromise on though if you’re starting off inside or where there’s no natural light in an enclosed insulated space are the grow lights - something I noticed over the last 10 years as I switched from the cheapo full spectrum-ish Amazon/ebay type of lights to more professional spider farmer or mars hydro lights I notice that the plants I grow now are stronger, stockier and take up less space than the ones I used to produce - the tomatoes aren’t all trying to grow tall and outwards and getting entangled with each other and now I only pot on peppers and aubergines on twice after germination before transplanting out in mid May from a February start.
I don’t mind my mid winter diet at all, I love the winter selection of salad onions and salad greens, especially now I supplement it with a few crunchy lettuce and spinach leaves from the grow lights and freshly dug sweet carrots, oca and yacon are all lovely. Cooked veg is even better, we will have plenty of cabbage, kale, all of the alliums, kales, sprouts and kalattes and all of the stored and fresh roots/squash and we just add a few peppers and tomatoes from jars or freezer. We do by fresh fruit from the supermarket too, which helps. The hungry gap is wonderful though, we have masses of leafy greens, strawberries, tomatoes, summer squash, cauliflower, calabrese, PSB, new season carrots and potatoes, spring, savoy and red cabbages, it definitely doesn’t feel hungry to us.
Yes, supermarket fruit is essential for us too. The “hungry gap” is a bit of a misnomer and relates more to stored good running out rather than nothing being available to eat. I think what you eat over winter is less varied. I’ve had carrot germination failures all this year and the only viable crop will be overwintering, but I’ll have more winter squash stored than I can eat as usual. Already harvesting parsnips and have a huge freezer bag of diced peppers and like you, leafy brassicas are a staple all over winter.
We have 160 plots on our site and apart from mine none of them has anything significant to eat during the hungry gap, except a few kale leaves and maybe a spring cabbage or two
Yes, clearing the autumn harvest and putting beds to sleep for the winter is the norm for most allotment holders.
If you aren’t/ can’t use all your outside beds over winter, when the main harvests are finished it’s the best time to add a mulch layer, put cardboard down to stop erosion and cover crops aren’t much mentioned at all - five of the smaller mesh beds I fill with field beans for the nitrogen and green manure and then when they’re done follow with dwarf brassicas, then mulch with own compost and fill with Asian greens for Autumn and then field beans again as the Asian greens are growing in the polytunnel over winter.
We were self sufficient before grow lights, but it certainly wasn’t as much fun as it is now with them, I think they are wonderful and they’ve improved what we grow, but also made winter much brighter in every way. I don’t actually have any propagators, vitapods or a grow room, but I do have lights in my conservatory, above a wardrobe and in the greenhouse. It’s an investment, but my total investments in lights is less than the value of a single winter’s harvest and the running cost is paid for with a single months harvest savings so it works out to be a very very good investment.
I think another issue with self-sufficiency over winter is not just the time or extra organisation or motivation, but that all our circumstances are different and that dictates a lot of the success or failures - a south facing conservatory for early cucumber plants to thrive or a heated greenhouse is entirely different to an allotment gardener with an unheated polytunnel. Just as a 2 up 2 down terraced house doesn’t provide any spare storage areas for food or an extra freezer. I created different microclimates in sheds which need insulation and so the lights can’t be used just to extend the day on timers, but have to be on the 12 or 16 hours which makes it more expensive overall.
Your greenhouse is a massive advantage - with so much pest pressure this year the one thing I’m missing is a “safe space” against heavy rain and for protection from slugs and cabbage whites just for seedlings to grow on in August and September - I sometimes watch you pegging up fleece and taking it down again whenever there’s a dip in temperatures - I’m wasting a lot of time at the moment carrying gravel trays in and out twice a day!
I only use fleece on the allotment and only on the very very cold days when the polytunnel would be below probably -5c. At home I use heat in the greenhouse because really cold nights are quite rare here and the £20/year cost is easily worth it for the lack of hassle
We’re in the South West and not at a high elevation and get few cold nights but had an overnight low of 6C here last week that killed all the leaves on a dozen cucumber plants and three melons, pretty much unique for August and only have 4 cukes left in the fridge and some sickly looking misshapen specimens on the vines. The courgettes didn’t fare much better, but they’re recovering a little.
Wow! Thanks Steve. This is a keeper.
Denise
Eating over winter and through the hungry gap is my favourite challenge even though it’s always a bit salad and stir-fry centric. It’s a seriously green and healthy diet considering that so many people appear to be able to survive on beige food, sugar and preservatives - but the reality is that while we’re so lucky with the UK’s mild non-continental climate and can get away with growing quality food year round it requires a serious investment in setting up a more professional grow room; getting electric propagators, buying a dozen Containerwise modules, buying vitapods, having a polytunnel or greenhouse to transplant into and plenty of grow lights for 3-4 months turns a passion into a frighteningly expensive hobby pretty quickly.
One thing I wouldn’t compromise on though if you’re starting off inside or where there’s no natural light in an enclosed insulated space are the grow lights - something I noticed over the last 10 years as I switched from the cheapo full spectrum-ish Amazon/ebay type of lights to more professional spider farmer or mars hydro lights I notice that the plants I grow now are stronger, stockier and take up less space than the ones I used to produce - the tomatoes aren’t all trying to grow tall and outwards and getting entangled with each other and now I only pot on peppers and aubergines on twice after germination before transplanting out in mid May from a February start.
I don’t mind my mid winter diet at all, I love the winter selection of salad onions and salad greens, especially now I supplement it with a few crunchy lettuce and spinach leaves from the grow lights and freshly dug sweet carrots, oca and yacon are all lovely. Cooked veg is even better, we will have plenty of cabbage, kale, all of the alliums, kales, sprouts and kalattes and all of the stored and fresh roots/squash and we just add a few peppers and tomatoes from jars or freezer. We do by fresh fruit from the supermarket too, which helps. The hungry gap is wonderful though, we have masses of leafy greens, strawberries, tomatoes, summer squash, cauliflower, calabrese, PSB, new season carrots and potatoes, spring, savoy and red cabbages, it definitely doesn’t feel hungry to us.
Yes, supermarket fruit is essential for us too. The “hungry gap” is a bit of a misnomer and relates more to stored good running out rather than nothing being available to eat. I think what you eat over winter is less varied. I’ve had carrot germination failures all this year and the only viable crop will be overwintering, but I’ll have more winter squash stored than I can eat as usual. Already harvesting parsnips and have a huge freezer bag of diced peppers and like you, leafy brassicas are a staple all over winter.
We have 160 plots on our site and apart from mine none of them has anything significant to eat during the hungry gap, except a few kale leaves and maybe a spring cabbage or two
Yes, clearing the autumn harvest and putting beds to sleep for the winter is the norm for most allotment holders.
If you aren’t/ can’t use all your outside beds over winter, when the main harvests are finished it’s the best time to add a mulch layer, put cardboard down to stop erosion and cover crops aren’t much mentioned at all - five of the smaller mesh beds I fill with field beans for the nitrogen and green manure and then when they’re done follow with dwarf brassicas, then mulch with own compost and fill with Asian greens for Autumn and then field beans again as the Asian greens are growing in the polytunnel over winter.
We were self sufficient before grow lights, but it certainly wasn’t as much fun as it is now with them, I think they are wonderful and they’ve improved what we grow, but also made winter much brighter in every way. I don’t actually have any propagators, vitapods or a grow room, but I do have lights in my conservatory, above a wardrobe and in the greenhouse. It’s an investment, but my total investments in lights is less than the value of a single winter’s harvest and the running cost is paid for with a single months harvest savings so it works out to be a very very good investment.
I think another issue with self-sufficiency over winter is not just the time or extra organisation or motivation, but that all our circumstances are different and that dictates a lot of the success or failures - a south facing conservatory for early cucumber plants to thrive or a heated greenhouse is entirely different to an allotment gardener with an unheated polytunnel. Just as a 2 up 2 down terraced house doesn’t provide any spare storage areas for food or an extra freezer. I created different microclimates in sheds which need insulation and so the lights can’t be used just to extend the day on timers, but have to be on the 12 or 16 hours which makes it more expensive overall.
That was my setup a few years ago, lights in a shed and an unheated polytunnel but thanks to youtube all that's changed
Your greenhouse is a massive advantage - with so much pest pressure this year the one thing I’m missing is a “safe space” against heavy rain and for protection from slugs and cabbage whites just for seedlings to grow on in August and September - I sometimes watch you pegging up fleece and taking it down again whenever there’s a dip in temperatures - I’m wasting a lot of time at the moment carrying gravel trays in and out twice a day!
I only use fleece on the allotment and only on the very very cold days when the polytunnel would be below probably -5c. At home I use heat in the greenhouse because really cold nights are quite rare here and the £20/year cost is easily worth it for the lack of hassle
We’re in the South West and not at a high elevation and get few cold nights but had an overnight low of 6C here last week that killed all the leaves on a dozen cucumber plants and three melons, pretty much unique for August and only have 4 cukes left in the fridge and some sickly looking misshapen specimens on the vines. The courgettes didn’t fare much better, but they’re recovering a little.