NEW MARKET, Va. - Every day is a salad day for Charles Dowding, a commercial gardener and author who prides himself on growing dozens of leaf lettuce varieties organically in his vegetable boxes throughout the year.

Dowding, of Somerset, England, is enthusiastic about the potential for salad leaves, which he contends are among the quickest and easiest vegetables you can produce — particularly in small spaces and containers.

"The leaves you pick will also be full of seasonal characteristics, reflecting how different salads give of their best at particular times of the year," he writes in "Salad Leaves for All Seasons: Organic Growing from Pot to Plot" (Green Books, 2008).

Unlike the crisphead varieties, which you gather only once per growing season, leaf lettuces are cut-and-come-again plants that provide repeated although smaller harvests from the continual picking of outer leaves, every week for two or three months.

"The beauty of growing your own leaves is that you can grow what you most enjoy," Dowding says. "I do notice here in Britain a great fascination for strong tasting leaves like rocket, mustard and many aromatic herbs like coriander, chervil and basil."

Salad greens can be grown almost anywhere, but preferably in full light and in temperatures above freezing by day.

"A light frost at night won't hurt them providing it's not consistently less than 23 degrees Fahrenheit," Dowding says.

George Ball, chairman and chief executive officer of W. Atlee & Burpee Co., agrees: "A lot of salad crops can be grown outdoors in winter — if you know what you're doing. Leeks come to mind. They would do well in Zone 5. Zone 6, as well, but there the microclimate has to be good."

Dowding knows a gardener who grows great leaves all winter in Maine, under a polyurethane-covered tunnel and with a sheet of fleece over his plants. "In a city, you can use window boxes. Where space is limited, salad leaves are probably the most productive vegetable, providing the most meals per surface area," Dowding says.

It's not unusual for the same leafy plant to provide different flavors at differing stages of maturity or at different times of the year.

"Young plants have the mildest flavors," Dowding says, and there are differences between salad seasons, too.

"Lettuces often have the mildest flavor and are extremely productive in spring and summer and I use them as a buffer for interesting, stronger flavored leaves," Dowding said. "At most times of year, I have 15 to 20 different kinds of leaves in the mix... ."

The challenge is greater, of course, in winter, when the absence of light and warmth slows plant growth or halts it altogether. Basil and many lettuces do not do well in mid-winter conditions. On the other hand, rockets and mustards and cresses and Claytonia (winter purslane) and corn salad (lamb's lettuce) all like some aspects of winter, so long as it isn't extremely cold.

Leaf lettuces are considered one of the most fragile vegetables in the garden — quick to wilt and fast to lose flavor unless eaten immediately. But there are ways to get around that.

"I find that leaves from plants grown in well composted soil have more life force and dry matter content, meaning that after being picked they keep really well," Dowding says.

Pick them early in the morning when they are crisp and fresh, then rinse and put in a plastic bag in the refrigerator, he suggests.

Many other greens can be grown alongside leaf lettuces and add color, crunch and flavors to the salad blends.

"Pea shoots really taste of pea, long before peas are ready to harvest," Dowding says. Carrot leaves "really taste of carrot."

And then there are the different basil flavors, such as lime, lemon and aniseed.

"Chervil in winter brings a wonderful fragrance," he says.

"It really is amazing how many salad leaf flavors there are."