Winter Lettuce: Sow Now for Salad Leaves from November to March

There is a strange gap in most vegetable gardens between the last summer lettuce in October and the first spring sowing in March. It does not need to be there. Lactuca sativa is genuinely hardy in the right varieties, and a row sown in the next three weeks will still be feeding you at Christmas. But winter lettuce works on completely different rules from summer lettuce, and if you treat it like a June crop you will lose it. The single most useful thing to understand is this: you do not grow lettuce in winter — you grow it in autumn and then store it alive in the ground. Everything else follows from that.

• Sow Mid-Aug to mid-Sept · last useful sowing early Oct under glass
• Types Hardy cos & winter butterhead · avoid iceberg
• Hardiness −5 to −10 °C for cos types · far more under fleece
• Harvest Nov–Dec leaf by leaf · main flush late Feb–Mar

Why the sowing date matters more than the variety

Below about ten hours of daylight, plant growth effectively stops. On our latitude that runs from early November to early February. A lettuce sown in late September has roughly eight weeks of usable growing light left; a lettuce sown in late October has almost none, and will sit as a two-leaf seedling until spring. Nothing you do — no fleece, no cloche, no feed — buys back light.

So work backwards. Aim to have plants with six to eight true leaves and a decent root system by the first week of November. In practice that means sowing between mid-August and mid-September outdoors, and no later than the first week of October in a cold frame or greenhouse border. If you missed August entirely, sow now and sow generously: some will size up, the rest become your March crop. Our September sowing guide and the seeds to sow in September collection cover what else should go in alongside.

Choosing varieties that actually survive

Hardiness in lettuce is not evenly spread across the species. Crisphead and iceberg types are the least cold-tolerant and should be left out of this entirely. What you want are the old winter varieties, most of them French or Dutch and bred long before heated glass existed: Winter Density and Rouge d'Hiver (cos), Arctic King, Brune d'Hiver and Val d'Orge (butterhead), and the reliably tough Merveille des Quatre Saisons. Upright cos types are the hardiest group as a rule, because water runs off the leaves instead of sitting in the heart.

Browse the full range in our lettuce seed collection or by species under Lactuca sativa, and read the complete guide to growing lettuce from seed for the basics of germination, spacing and bolting that apply year-round.

How to sow and grow winter lettuce

1. Sow into modules, not open ground Late-summer soil is dry and slug-heavy. Three seeds per cell, 5 mm deep, thinned to one, gives you plants you can place exactly where you want them.
2. Germinate somewhere bright and cool Shade, not warmth, is what a September seedling needs. Stretched seedlings never make hardy plants — see leggy seedlings.
3. Plant out at four true leaves, crown proud Space at 20–25 cm — wider than summer spacing. Air movement between plants is your main defence against winter mould. Harden off first.
4. Cover from late October, not before Covering too early makes soft, mildew-prone plants. Fleece, a cloche or a cold frame — see how to extend the growing season for what each one buys you.
5. Water in the morning, at the soil, sparingly Under a cloche the soil is in a rain shadow and may need watering even in January — but never onto the leaves, and never in the evening.

Winter salad: two ways to get it

In practice, grow both. Lettuce gives you the substance and the sweetness; corn salad, mizuna, rocket, winter spinach, chicory and endive give you the reliability. A row of pak choi and some spring onions round the bed out nicely. If the weather beats you altogether, microgreens on a windowsill fill the gap in ten days.

Common winter lettuce mistakes

• Sowing in October and hoping — the seed will germinate, but the plant has no light budget left to build with. Mid-September is the real deadline outdoors.
• Growing summer varieties — a Salad Bowl or a Great Lakes will collapse at the first hard frost. Variety choice is not optional here.
• Tidying away the tatty outer leaves — damaged outer leaves are a blanket over the crown. Leave them until February; the plant regrows from the centre.
• Cutting the whole head — take individual outer leaves instead. Below about 5 °C a cut surface does not heal, and the wound becomes the entry point for grey mould.
• Sealing the cloche shut — still, damp air at 4 °C is exactly what botrytis wants. Ventilate on any day above freezing.
• Forgetting slugs — they stay active all winter under a cover. Check weekly; see garden pests and control.

Frequently asked questions

How cold can lettuce survive?
Hardy cos types such as Winter Density come through −5 to −10 °C once established, and considerably lower under fleece or in a cold frame. Butterhead winter varieties sit a little above that. Young, soft, recently fed plants are far less hardy than slow-grown ones — which is another argument for sowing early and feeding not at all.

Will winter lettuce grow in an unheated greenhouse?
Yes, and it is the easiest option of all. A greenhouse border or a deep raised bed with a cover gives you clean, dry leaves all winter. Pots work too — a wide, shallow container by a bright wall is fine; see our container growing guide.

Why has my winter lettuce stopped growing?
Almost certainly because it is November. Growth resumes when daylength passes ten hours again, usually in the first half of February, and the biggest harvest of the whole crop tends to come in March. That pause is normal and is not a sign of anything wrong.

Can I grow winter lettuce in a shady spot?
Partly. Lettuce is one of the most shade-tolerant vegetables there is, but in winter you have very little light to spare, so give the crop your brightest position and save the shadier beds for the summer crop. Our guide to what to grow in shade explains how to work out how many hours a spot actually gets.

Winter lettuce asks for one decision in September and then almost nothing for five months. Sow a tray this week, plant it out in three, cover it at the end of October, and pick leaf by leaf until the light comes back. Fill the rest of the bed from our vegetable seeds, keep the sowing going with our beginner's vegetable guide and the rest of our growing guides, and remember that the crop you sow now is the one you will be most grateful for in February.